Song Sun (1493–1583) retired from public office in his later years and built a pavilion at the foot of Mount Jewolbong in his hometown of Damyang. The pavilion was named "Myeonangjeong," and Song Sun himself later took this same name as his own pen name — the identities of the pavilion and its owner effectively became one. Here, Song Sun composed a reclusive gasa (a form of Korean verse) known as "Myeonangjeong-ga," a work reflecting his state of mind as he withdrew from the world into nature.
Myeonangjeong did not remain merely one man's retirement retreat. Song Sun served here as teacher to several younger scholars, including Jeong Cheol, and the pavilion naturally became a gathering place where these figures exchanged poetry and prose. A small pavilion built for one retired official's personal use ended up, as a result, becoming the birthplace of an entire literary genre of mid-Joseon Korea: gasa literature.