Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha | Seokbyeong-ri Breakwater, Guryongpo — The Red Lighthouse, and a Village People Live In

Hye-jin walks out along a short concrete breakwater to a red lighthouse and tells Du-sik what she has been failing to say for several episodes. The lighthouse is at Seokbyeong 1-ri, a fishing hamlet on the coast below Guryongpo, and the low houses stacked behind it are the ones the camera used for Gongjin.

Read that sentence again, because it carries an obligation. Those are not sets. People live in them. Reviews left by visitors include one from someone who grew up there — my old house, Grandma Yeong-ok's house — and another, from a resident, that says simply: this is a filming location, people live here now, please do not cause any inconvenience.

So: the breakwater and the lighthouse are public and yours to walk. The lanes between the houses are somebody's front garden. Do not photograph through windows, do not go up the alleys for a better angle on the roofline, and keep your voice down early and late. The village has no cafés and no facilities; Guryongpo is a short drive for lunch.

Red harbour lights mark the port side of a channel entrance and there are hundreds along this coast, which is precisely why the show chose one — Gongjin was meant to be any of them.

Walk to the end, turn around, and look back at the village from the water. That is the shot the drama opened on, and it is also the furthest you should go.

Cover photo: the Guryongpo coast, by Junho Jung, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Nearby coastline, not Seokbyeong-ri.