Encounter|Hongnamgyo on Hongjecheon — Almost Together Under the Expressway

The line everyone remembers is not said in Cuba. It is said under an overpass in Seodaemun.

Hongnamgyo crosses Hongjecheon between Hongyeon Bridge and the next span, a concrete lid over a restored city stream. Encounter used the riverside path here as an outdoor gallery. A reproduction of Kim Whanki's Where, in What Form, Shall We Meet Again already hung on the wall. Kim Jin-hyuk walks Cha Soo-hyun past it and asks if they can be in that unfinished thing Koreans call a “sseom.” Not dating. Not nothing. The painting does the rest of the work.

The path is public at all hours. Cyclists use it. Office workers eat kimbap on the benches. The Naebu Expressway growls overhead. That mix is why the scene lands: a luxury-hotel life stepping into a neighbourhood waterway that does not dress for television.

If you stand under the span late, the water is louder than the traffic. The drama needed a place ordinary enough to make a careful woman say yes to almost.

Photo: Hongjecheon, public domain / CC0, via Wikimedia Commons