Master's Sun|Banyan Tree Club and Spa Seoul — The Pool That Closed a Case

One of Kingdom's hotel ghosts does not want revenge. She wants a swim.

The drama sent that wish to a real pool on the Namsan slope: Banyan Tree Club and Spa Seoul, 60 Jangchungdan-ro, Jung-gu. The building began as Kim Swoo-geun's Tower Hotel in 1969, closed, and reopened in 2010 as this urban resort. GPS listings put the entrance near 37.5505 north, 127.0006 east. The outdoor Oasis and the indoor pool look away from the traffic toward the trees. In the series a prize-winning ajumma who died before she could use her hotel voucher gets the water she was owed. Gong-shil and Joong-won stand at the edge and let the scene finish what the living world did not.

The pool is not a public lido. It belongs to the hotel and the club. You photograph the Kim Swoo-geun silhouette from Jangchungdan-ro. You walk the park paths on the same hillside. If you book a room or a day facility you can stand at the water the camera used. The mountain is the same mountain. The traffic on Jangchungdan-ro is the same traffic.

What the episode understood, and what you still feel on this slope, is that luxury in this drama is not marble for its own sake. It is a postponed ordinary pleasure, finally taken, in a pool that looks at Namsan instead of at a set wall.