Where the Yeongsan River meets the sea, centuries of wind and wave erosion have carved two rock formations into the unmistakable shape of a person wearing a traditional Korean gat, or wide-brimmed hat. Gatbawi ("Hat Rock") is a purely natural formation, geologically speaking — the product of coastal weathering — and it was designated Natural Monument No. 500 on April 27, 2009 (its official name was later updated to "Mokpo Gatbawi Tafoni," reflecting the specific weathering process that shaped it). People have, understandably, layered their own stories onto it.
The most widely told version goes like this: a young man supported his sick father through years of hard labor — selling salt, working as a farmhand — and came home one day, wages in hand, only to find his father had already died. Overcome with guilt at having missed his father's final moments, too ashamed to face the sky, he wept before the grave while wearing his gat and turned to stone on the spot; the larger rock is called the Father Rock, the smaller one the Son Rock. A closely related version tells of a son who, while trying to move his father's coffin to a sunnier burial site, accidentally dropped it into the sea — consumed by the shame of this act of filial failure, he kept vigil at the spot until he died there too. A third, quite different story tells of an enlightened Buddhist monk who, before crossing the Yeongsan River, set down the gat and walking stick he'd been carrying and departed without them. None of these can be verified — they're oral folklore, not documented history — but what's genuinely interesting is the act itself: taking a shape nature produced on its own and layering opposing human emotions onto it, guilt and grief in some versions, transcendence in another. A 298-meter floating boardwalk now circles the rocks, letting visitors cross without a boat while taking in both the night view and the spot where the river meets the sea. Visit near sunset and the rock's silhouette takes on an unusually human quality.