Temple story · Traditional attribution
The Cave Prayer and the Sealed Letter
The Mokjeonggul tradition of Geumsunsa
Encyclopedia of Korean Culture: 'Mokjeonggul Cave on Samgaksan'; Geumsunsa website: 'Mokjeonggul, a Sacred Place of Prayer', 'Legends of Geumsunsa'
On the day the prayer ended, the royal household obtained a sealed letter, and in it was written: 'Gyeongsul year (1790), sixth month, eighteenth day, at such-and-such an hour, the crown prince descends to be born.' This foretold the birth of King Sunjo.
It is said that at the request of King Jeongjo, troubled because he had no heir, the monk Nongsan (聾山), who had practiced only in the mountains for decades, prayed in this cave, Mokjeonggul, for the birth of a prince. On the day the prayer ended, the story goes, the royal household obtained a sealed letter saying that a crown prince would be born on the eighteenth day of the sixth month of the Gyeongsul year, 1790. When that day came, it is said, a rainbow tinged with red drifted in from the northwest and wrapped around the birth chamber; those who followed its trail found the light coming from the forehead of an old monk seated cross-legged in his robe on the altar of Mokjeonggul, who had already passed away. Jeongjo then ordered the royal household office, Naesusa, to build a temple above the cave, and had Kim Hong-do paint Nongsan's portrait so that offerings could be made to it, the tradition says; Geumsunsa, for its part, says Jeongjo had a temple it credits to the master Muhak greatly rebuilt at this time. The details differ from source to source: the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture records a hundred-day prayer, Geumsunsa a 300-day prayer to Gwaneum, and the part in which Nongsan is reborn as King Sunjo is a story told at the temple. Visit Mokjeonggul beside the temple, the cave the story names as the place of this prayer.