Mr. Sunshine | Naganeupseong, Suncheon — Dong-mae's Reckoning

Gu Dong-mae was born into the baekjeong caste — butchers, the lowest rung of Joseon, outside the system entirely. His revenge on the men who degraded his parents was filmed at Naganeupseong in Suncheon.

The choice of location does specific work. Naganeupseong is a walled town of the Joseon period, its ramparts raised by an irregular militia of ordinary people during the Japanese invasions, with thatched houses laid out inside on the original street pattern. It is a fortress built by commoners — precisely the class Dong-mae was born beneath and spends the series climbing out of.

And it is not a museum. People still live in those houses. Roughly a hundred households farm, cook and hang washing inside the walls, which is what makes it feel different from a reconstruction and what obliges you to behave. Closed gates mean a private home; open ones are usually part of a programme. Do not walk into courtyards.

Nine to six, a small entry fee, and you can climb the ramparts and walk the circuit for the view down over the roofs. There are stalls inside selling makgeolli and pajeon. Public transport is awkward; a car helps.

Walk the wall rather than the streets. From up there the town reads as what it is — a defensive work thrown up by people with no rank and no cavalry — and Dong-mae's whole arc is the argument that such people were never as powerless as the record says.

Cover photo: Naganeupseong village, by Bernard Gagnon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.