In Gurim Village, Gunseo-myeon, Yeongam County, a traditional account holds that Wang In, a scholar of the kingdom of Baekje, was born and raised here, and that he traveled to Japan carrying the Cheonjamun (Thousand Character Classic), the Analects of Confucius, and other texts, along with a group of craftsmen, to transmit learning and culture. According to this account, he departed by boat from a port called Sangdaepo, and this journey is said to have laid the foundation for Japan's Asuka culture. Gurim Village today continues to present this account, centered on the Wang In Historic Site, as a core part of its local identity.
This narrative, however, is the subject of clear and serious scholarly disagreement, and disclosing this disagreement rather than concealing it is consistent with the principle of accurate reporting. The chronology itself presents a problem. The actual author of the Cheonjamun, which Wang In is said to have transmitted, was the Chinese scholar Zhou Xingsi, who was born in 470 CE and died in 521 CE — yet the period in which Wang In is estimated to have traveled to Japan falls roughly between 346 and 405 CE. In other words, there is a chronological contradiction: at the time Wang In is said to have gone to Japan, the author of the very book he supposedly carried had not yet been born. Compounding this, the historian Mun Dong-seok has argued that "the claim that Wang In was born in Yeongam rests on insufficient evidence, and amounts to nothing more than a recent effort to elevate Wang In's profile by combining him with legends and sites associated with the monk Doseon." It has also been increasingly supported by recent archaeological findings that, around the 4th to 5th century when Wang In is presumed to have gone to Japan, Baekje's capital was located at Hanseong, and the Yeongsan River basin was still under the independent political authority of Mahan. That an old and widely known story is not necessarily verified history is something this village's story demonstrates with candor.