The title comes from Geumo-san, the Mount of the Golden Turtle, today called Namsan (Gyeongju), which was the site of the Yongjang Temple where tradition records that Kim wrote the stories. The novel is written after the Chinese Jiandeng Xinhua (Tales while trimming the lampwick, 1378) of Qu You, but is not simply a pasticcio of the works contained in Jiandeng Xinhua.