Personal Taste|Petite France — The Date That Was Not a Date

The first stills from Personal Taste did not come from Seoul.

They came from Petite France, the French-style village on the north shore of Cheongpyeong Lake, where Son Ye-jin and Lee Min-ho shot a date that the plot refused to call a date. Gae-in still believed Jin-ho was gay. The cameras did not.

Pastel houses, a hillside, a lake road that looks borrowed from another country. VisitKorea and the park itself still list the drama among the titles that made the village a stop — Beethoven Virus first, then this series, then Secret Garden and My Love from the Star. The buildings have not changed their paint enough to hide the 2010 frames.

You pay admission. The village opens at nine. Walk the upper lanes rather than crowding the Little Prince statue at the gate. The date scenes used the quieter terraces and the painted shutters that face the trees, not the souvenir row.

Jin-ho came here performing. Gae-in came here unguarded. That is the whole mechanism of the series, moved an hour out of Seoul and dropped onto a hillside that already looked like a set.

Take the Gyeongchun Line to Cheongpyeong and the local bus along Hoban-ro. The address is 1063 Hoban-ro, Cheongpyeong-myeon, Gapyeong. When you leave, the lake is the thing that stays. The pastel walls were always a costume.

Photo: Petite France, Gapyeong, Wikimedia Commons.