Mr. Sunshine | Unbo's House, Cheongju — The American Legation

Eugene Choi returns to Joseon as acting American consul, and the legation he takes up residence in is Unbo's House in Cheongju. It is also where he and Go Ae-sin cover each other's mouths with a hand to test whether the other is the assassin — one of the most-replayed sequences in the series. The house was not a legation. It was built for Kim Ki-chang, the painter known as Unbo, who lost his hearing to illness at seven and became one of the defining Korean artists of the twentieth century — best known outside Korea for painting the life of Christ with Korean faces, in hanbok, in a Korean landscape. He lived and worked here. It is open as a museum: half nine to half five, closed Mondays, 6,000 won with a discount for Cheongju residents. The garden is the reason to come — carefully kept, with the stonework and bonsai he arranged. The main building's underground library, long shut, has been opened up. One honest note. Visitors who knew the house when Unbo was alive report that very few of his own works remain in it; what you get is the building, the garden and the setting rather than a collection. Come for the place, not the paintings. Sit in the garden for a while before you leave. A drama about a Korean-American returning to a country that sold his parents chose, for its American legation, the home of a deaf painter who spent his life putting Korean faces on a foreign story. Nobody points this out on screen. It is there anyway. Cover photo: Hapcheon Hwanggang, by Visviva, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Regional view, not the house.