Goblin | Jumunjin Breakwater — The Cake, the Scarf, and the East Sea

The sand arrester at Yeongjin Beach is a low concrete finger pointing at the East Sea. Wind comes in over the tetrapods. Gulls work the line where the water turns from green to grey.

In the first episode of Goblin, Ji Eun-tak sits here with a birthday cake on her knees and blows the candles out. The wish summons Kim Shin. He arrives with a bundle of buckwheat flowers and a red scarf that the wind keeps trying to take. The drama called the place Jumunjin. The city still pins it at 1609 Haean-ro, Jumunjin-eup, on the north shore of Gangneung.

The structure was poured to stop the beach from walking away. After December 2016 it became a queue. Couples still wait for a gap in the spray and stand where the girl stood. The red lighthouse at the harbor sits a few minutes north. Fish trucks roll past on the coast road. The water is shallow enough that children wade in summer. In winter the same stones hold ice in their joints.

Gangneung's own tourism pages still list the breakwater as the Goblin site. You do not need a ticket. You need a morning when the wind is off the land, so the scarf, if you brought one, stays in your hands.

Photo: Choi Kwangmo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Yeongjin Beach, 18 December 2016.