A Korean stone pagoda looks solid, and structurally it very nearly is. The reliquary is not displayed in it but built into it, usually in a cavity cut into one of the upper stones or into the base, sealed at construction and not intended to be opened again. That single decision shapes everything about the objects. They were made to be beautiful for an audience that would never see them, which is why the metalwork is as careful on the inside faces as on the outside, and it is why the sets are nested rather than single. The relic grains are small, translucent and easily lost, so they sit in a stoppered bottle of glass or rock crystal; the bottle sits in a metal case, often built as a miniature hall complete with roof tiles, railings and cast guardian figures; and the case sits in a plain stone box that takes the weight of the pagoda above it.
What accompanies the relic matters as much as the relic. Depositors added coins, glass and rock crystal beads, tiny votive pagodas, fragments of textile and, more than once, texts. The deposit is therefore a dated assemblage as well as a devotional act, and archaeologists read it as such. Because pagodas are only opened when they are dismantled for structural repair, the recovery of these sets has been concentrated in the twentieth century restoration campaigns, and each opening has tended to produce a short burst of new evidence about metalworking, printing and trade at a precise moment.