Crash Landing on You|Jungangtap Historic Park — The Pagoda Where the Soldiers Found Her

The seven-story stone pagoda at Chungju stands on a raised bank above the Namhan River and has been there since the late eighth century. It is National Treasure No. 6. Its official name is the Seven-story Stone Pagoda in Tappyeong-ri. People call it Jungangtap, the central pagoda, because legend put the middle of the Silla realm on this mound. Crash Landing on You used the park behind the tower for a reunion that belongs to the South. Se-ri meets Jeong-hyeok's men again on ground that is not a set village and not a Swiss lake. The pagoda does not appear as a plot device. It simply occupies the same hill the cameras needed. A plaque now marks the filming point. Families come for the sculpture park and the river path as much as for the drama. At night a large moon installation lights the slope. The stone itself stays dark and older than any of that. Walk around the base. The body of the tower is assembled from long granite slabs. The roof stones lift slightly at the corners, the way Unified Silla pagodas do when they want to look lighter than they are. The drama borrowed a place that already knew how to hold a meeting. Two walkers starting from opposite ends of a country, the story says, always arrived here. That is older folklore than television. Standing under the seventh roof, you can feel why a location scout stopped. Photo: Gcd822, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons