The Doctors|Yangsu Railroad Bridge — The Iron Span They Rode Before the White Coats

The old Jungang Line still crosses the Bukhangang on a lattice of rusted iron at Yangsu. Beside it a newer highway bridge curves over the same water. In episode 2 of The Doctors, Hong Ji-hong and Yoo Hye-jung put bicycles on that rail span and ride as if the river below were the only clock they had.

SBS put the scene on the Bukhangang Railroad Bridge at Yangpyeong, the crossing local riders still call Yangsu Cheolgyo. You reach it from Yangsu Station on the Gyeongui-Jungang Line and follow the bike path that threads the two bridges. The river is wide here. The old truss sits low enough that you hear the water when a train is not passing.

The drama needed a road that did not look like a hospital corridor. Thirteen years sit between the teacher who pulled a delinquent off a rooftop and the surgeons who meet again under a Gukil sign. The bridge is the hinge. Two people who should have stayed in their lanes share one beam of steel and do not fall in.

Stand on the deck long enough and the city behind Seoul thins out. Cafes crowd the approaches now. The iron itself is still a working piece of the old line, not a replica built for cameras. That is why the shot holds. You can put a bicycle on the same rivets and feel how little cover the river gives when the weather turns.

Photo: the old railroad span and the newer highway bridge at Yangsu, from Wikimedia Commons (Doo Ho Kim / related Commons views of Yangsu Cheolgyo), CC BY-SA 2.0.