Late in the Silla period, the scholar-official Choe Chiwon was posted as magistrate of Taesan-gun, in what is now Jeongeup. His governance was so admired that the local people built a shrine to him — while he was still alive. Shrines built to honor the living, rather than the dead, are rare enough in Korean history to have their own name: saengsadang. That shrine became Taesansa, later relocated to its present site in 1483, the 14th year of King Seongjong's reign.
Enshrining a living person is not something communities do lightly. It is not commemoration after loss; it is gratitude paid in real time, while the person who earned it can still receive it. What Choe Chiwon left behind was not a line in a chronicle but a debt his neighbors chose to repay immediately — a debt that would eventually take the name Museong Seowon.