This study examines the Sajik 1 District Site and the Cheongju City Hall Site in Cheongju, focusing on how the production of bronze vessels (cheongdong gimeong; 靑銅器皿) in the Cheongju region was organized in terms of methods and production systems, and how it weakened and ultimately ceased after the late thirteenth century. Based on a synthesis of the layout of presumed melting furnaces (yonghaero; 鎔解爐), the superimposition of heat-fractured surfaces, and the distribution and discard patterns of clay casting moulds (toje yongbeom; 土製鎔范), crucibles, and related debris, the evidence suggests a bronze-casting system in which routine dispersed operations coexisted with intensified production concentrated in particular periods. With regard to the nature of this production system, this study considers two possibilities in parallel: a government-run craft industry responding to official demand, and a temple-based (monastic) craft industry in which Buddhist monasteries played leading roles in demand, commissioning, and inspection. However, no decisive archaeological markers have yet been identified that would allow a definitive conclusion. At the present stage, a more cautious interpretation is to posit a multi-layered production system in which government and temple craft activities were intertwined at different levels and in different ways, without reducing the evidence to a single model.
According to the chronological assessment of excavated celadon, bronze-vessel production appears to have expanded in earnest in the tenth to eleventh centuries and to have reached its height through the mid-twelfth to mid-thirteenth centuries. After the late thirteenth century, however, overlapping internal and external factors—including the Khitan (Kadan) incursion, the dismantling of copper stations (dongso; 銅所), and the weakening of mineral procurement—likely undermined the production base, leading to a trajectory of decline and discontinuation.