Goblin|Deoksugung Stonewall Walk — Chicken Skewers Along the Palace Brick

The stone wall of Deoksugung is a working sidewalk. Office workers cut through it at lunch. Couples use it after dark. In Goblin, Kim Shin and Ji Eun-tak walk this same brick line with paper cups and street food, the palace on one side and Jeong-dong on the other, as if immortality could be an evening errand. The wall is Joseon masonry repaired in the twentieth century. It runs along Deoksugung-gil from City Hall toward Jeongdong Theater. At night the city hangs lanterns in the trees. Ground lights pick out the brick courses. None of that was built for a drama. The drama noticed it. Fans still come looking for the stretch where the two of them eat and talk without a sword in the frame. The wall does not mark the spot. You find it by walking until the traffic noise drops and the brick stays continuous for a hundred meters. The scene works because the place is already tender. A palace that lost its king. A street that kept the wall. Two people who do not match in time, sharing food that will be gone in ten minutes. If you come at dusk, wait for the lanterns. The wall holds warmth after the sun leaves the street. That is the ordinary fact the series elevated, and it is still here on a Tuesday. Photo: Sungslim, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons