In 1597, during the second Japanese invasion of Korea, Admiral Yi Sun-sin won one of the most celebrated naval victories in Korean history at the Battle of Myeongnyang, defeating a massive Japanese fleet with just twelve ships. But victory hadn't solved his supply problem — his forces were still desperately short on both provisions and manpower. According to local legend, Yi had a rocky outcrop at the foot of Mt. Yudalsan covered in straw thatching so that, from a distance, it looked like an enormous stockpile of rice. He reportedly had local women link hands and perform the traditional ganggangsullae circle dance around the base of the rock, so that from far away it would look as though the mountain were crawling with soldiers. That rock is known today as Noijeokbong — literally, "peak of the exposed stockpile."
This isn't a battlefield account documented in official military records so much as a story passed down orally in the Mokpo region. Worth noting: the same "rock disguised as a grain pile" motif also appears in the legend of nearby Mt. Okmaesan in Haenam — this appears to be a recurring folk-tale pattern associated with Yi Sun-sin along the south coast, told with local variations in more than one place, rather than a story unique to Mokpo. Even so, it has survived this long for a good reason: the idea of buying time by fooling the enemy's eyes, rather than meeting them head-on when you can't win a direct fight, is the kind of story worth retelling. In 2018, this 421-year-old deception tactic was reenacted as a local festival in Mokpo. Standing in front of Noijeokbong today, it just looks like an ordinary rocky peak — but picture it, for a moment, through the eyes of an exhausted invading army who might have mistaken it for a mountain of grain, and the view changes.