Omokdae is nothing more than a modest hill, but something that happened here foreshadowed the founding of the Joseon dynasty a full 12 years before it actually happened. In 1380, the general Yi Seong-gye — the man who would go on to found Joseon — stopped in Jeonju, his ancestral hometown, on his way back from a major victory over Japanese pirate raiders at the Battle of Hwangsan. He gathered his clan at Omokdae to celebrate, and, caught up in the moment, sang the "Song of the Great Wind" (Daepungga) — a song originally attributed to Liu Bang, the founder of China's Han dynasty, sung upon seizing the empire. For a man who was, at that point, still just a general serving the Goryeo dynasty, this was the first time he'd let slip that he intended to found a new kingdom of his own.
Also there that day, according to tradition, was Jeong Mong-ju — a Goryeo loyalist who would later become one of Korean history's most celebrated symbols of unwavering loyalty. Furious at what he'd just heard, Jeong stormed out of the celebration. Crossing the Jeonju stream on horseback, he grew thirsty and stopped to ask a woman by a well for water; according to the story that's been passed down, she floated a dogwood leaf on the water before handing it to him, so he wouldn't drink too fast and choke. Jeong rode on past that well and climbed to Manggyeongdae, inside the nearby Namgosanseong fortress, where he composed a poem mourning the decline of Goryeo and his devotion to a dynasty he could feel slipping away. That poem is still carved into the stone at Manggyeongdae today. On the same day, at the same party, one man previewed the birth of a new nation and another man wrote a poem about his loyalty to the dying one. Standing on either hill with this story in mind, Jeonju stops looking like mere backdrop to the founding of Joseon — it looks like the actual fork in the road.