In the year 157, the fourth year of King Adala, who was the eighth ruler of the Silla Dynasty, there lived a man named Yeonorang and his wife Seonyeo in a remote fishing village. They earned a living by fishing and collecting seaweed. One day, as always, Yeonorang went out to the sea to pick some seaweed. On the seashore, he saw a big, black rock that he had never seen before. Out of curiosity, he climbed up the strange rock, which suddenly began to move. It rapidly drifted out to sea, so he couldn’t get down from it. He had no choice but to stick to the rock and let it float on the sea wherever it went. After a while, the rock reached land, which turned out to be the island of Japan. Local people were very surprised and amazed to see a man who had crossed the sea on a moving rock. They believed the man was a great figure sent from God and they hailed him as king.

Back at home, Yeonorang’s wife, Seonyeo, was waiting for her husband, who never came back. She was worried to death and she just couldn’t sit at home. She went out to the seashore and wandered around the area in the hopes of finding a trace of her missing husband. Unfortunately, all she could see was the vast blue sea and the burning sands. Feeling sad and miserable, she was about to cry when she saw something. It was a big, black rock. But it was not the rock itself that drew her attention. What caught her eye was a pair of shoes on the rock. She ran toward the rock and picked up the shoes. At a glance, she was able to recognize that the shoes were her husband’s. Seeing the shoes led her to believe that her husband was still alive somewhere. Seonyeo climbed up the rock, as her husband did before. The rock, again, started to move and floated across the sea. In the same way, the rock took the woman to the same island of Japan. Local residents were, again, astonished to see another person coming from nowhere on a rock. They took the woman to the king, who was none other than her husband she had missed so much. The couple was finally reunited in the island country. There, Yeonorang became king and his wife Seonyeo became queen.

After their arrival in Japan, however, something extraordinary happened in their home country, Silla. The sun and the moon stopped shining, never rising again. A fortuneteller explained to the Silla king that the spirits of the sun and the moon had moved to Japan and that caused all the chaos. The king sent an envoy to Yeonorang and Seonyeo in Japan and asked them to return to Silla. However, Yeonorang was already king in Japan and he believed he had gone there by God’s will. He thought it would be impossible to return to Silla. Instead, he suggested that the envoy take a beautiful silk fabric the queen had woven herself. He told the envoy to take the fabric to Silla and offer a memorial ritual to heavenly God with it.

When the envoy returned, he conveyed Yeonorang’s words and Seonyeo’s silk fabric to the king. As instructed, the king held a rite for the heavenly God with the fabric. Instantly, the sun and the moon started to rise again, and peace returned to the country again. From then on, the silk fabric was designated as a national treasure and was stored in a royal depot. The depot was named “Guibigo,” meaning “a room where a precious silk is kept.” Also, the venue for the memorial rite was named “Yeongil-hyeon,” which refers to a place where the rising sun is greeted. The site is present-day Pohang in southeastern Korea.

Today, there are the statues of Yeonorang and Seonyeo at the Homigot Sunrise Square in Pohang as a symbol of Homigot, the very first place where the sun rises in Korea.