A series of Buddhist services were held at roughly 20-thousand temples across the nation for Buddha’s two-thousand-559th birthday on Monday.
 
Around ten-thousand Buddhist leaders and devotees, including the Venerable Jaseung of the nation's largest Buddhist order Jogye, took part in a celebratory ceremony held at the Jogye Temple in Seoul.
 
During the ceremony, Jogye presented “coexistence, co-prosperity and unity” as keys to realizing reunification of the two Koreas.
 
The Buddhist sect also issued its first inter-Korean statement in four years, praying for the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
 
Buddhist organizations from the two Koreas had issued similar joint statements every year from 1997 to 2011, but the statements have not been issued since 2012 due to the North’s lack of response.
 
Families of victims of the Sewol ferry disaster, unemployed workers and sexual minorities were also invited to the ceremony.