This article explores, from a colonialism perspective, where the stone relic stupa in the Bulguksa Temple has been taken since its first reporting in 1904 and how it finally settled down in its current location. Next to the Birojeon Hall (Vairocana Hall) in the Bulguksa Temple, Gyeongju has one relic stupa. This stupa was transported to Japan at the end of the Joseon period, and its whereabouts after that became unknown. It was then returned to Joseon in 1933. This has been understood as Japan looting the stupa. This article reconstructs the course of taking the stupa from the temple, it wandering across Japan, and it being returned to Joseon based on official documents from the Government-General Museum of Joseon and the Diary of Sekino Tadashi, which have been made open to the public. The key players were Osada Shinzō (長田信藏), who carried the stupa; Shiraishi Tash iro (白石多士良), who hid it; Nagao Kin’ya (長尾欽彌), who bought the stupa then donated to the governor-general of Joseon; Ugaki Kazushige (宇垣一成) , the governor-general who politically utilized it; and finally, Sekino Tadashi (関野貞), a Japanese government scholar. Before Japanese occupation, Sekino highly appraised the stupa at Bulguksa Temple: “It is the most excellent stone lantern.” This comment was the main reason for looting the stupa, and ironically, his comment, “the essence of the Silla culture,” also caused the stupa to be returned to Joseon after wandering Korea and Japan under the slogan of reconciling Japan and Joseon. After Sekino’s death, Go Yuseop (高裕夑) argued that the stupa was made, not under the Unified Silla period, but under the Goryeo period. His argument was widely accepted until the reconstruction of the Bulguksa Temple in the 1970s. The purpose of the project was to reproduce “the essence of magnificent Silla culture” by restoring the temple, which is a symbolic architectural site of the Unified Silla period. However, there were many barriers, particularly for the relic stupa, because it was paradoxical that the stupa, which was accepted as being Goryeo’s, was located in the same site as the Bulguksa Temple, which represents the Silla. After the protective structure of the stupa was damaged—which provided a valid excuse to debate its relocation—it was repositioned and remains at the side of the Birojeon Hall, not in front of it, which was its original location. The stupa’s travels (i.e., being carried to Japan, being returned home, and being relocated within the Bulguksa Temple site) were based on the colonial perception that Korea’s Buddhist artistic history enjoyed its pinnacle during the Unified Silla period and declined afterward.