North of what is now Jeongeup, on a peak once called Mangjebong, there is said to have been a stone where a woman climbed every day. Her husband had gone off to trade and had not returned; fearing he might come to harm walking home in the dark, she climbed the stone each evening to watch the road he would take. That worry became words, and the words survived as Jeongeupsa — the only Baekje-era song whose complete lyrics still exist today, preserved in the 15th-century music compendium Akhak gwebeom.
How does one person's private worry outlast an entire kingdom? What makes Jeongeupsa remarkable is exactly that: it is not a song about kings or wars, but about a nameless woman's private vigil — and that vigil has outlived the country in which she lived. Baekje is gone. Her waiting is not.