Two of the 11 Buddhist paintings that originally belonged to a temple in the southeastern city of Busan will be auctioned here, the temple and the auction house said Tuesday.

The "Chilseong (Seven Stars)" paintings gained fame when three of them returned home from Switzerland in July after being illegally taken out of the country about 50 years ago.

According to the Beomeo Temple and the Seoul Auction Corp., the two paintings from the 19th century Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) will go on sale at the Seoul Auction House on Sept. 15. Their estimated prices range from 3.5 million won ($2,901) to 5.5 million won per piece.

They were part of art pieces that the Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation seized from Kim Min-young, a former chief of the now-bankrupt Busan Savings Bank.

The paintings on silk, symbolizing the Big Dipper and several other stars in the sky, were created in 1861 at Pyochung Temple in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, before being enshrined at Beomeo Temple in Busan.

They are presumed to have been smuggled out of the country during the chaos of the Korean society in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation and the temple acquired three of the paintings at the Koller Auktionen in Switzerland for 78,500 Swiss francs (94 million won) in June. The paintings were enshrined the next month at a museum of the Beomeo Temple in a ceremony to mark their return after nearly 50 years.

The Chilseong paintings that will be in next week's auction have the same letters that appear to be the name of a donor in a red square box at the bottom center of each painting for inscribing the archival record as the two paintings from Switzerland.

"The paintings on sale are identical to the ones that returned from Switzerland in terms of the overall composition of a picture and style," said Jeong Woo-taek, an expert of Buddhist paintings who works for Seoul's Dongguk University. (Yonhap)