Uncontrollably Fond | Nagok Beach — The House the County Built on the Sand

The house on the East Sea was not a found villa. Uljin County built it on the sand for the cameras.

Nagok Beach lies at the northern edge of Gyeongsangbuk-do, in Buk-myeon, Uljin-gun, a 300-meter cove where Nagokcheon meets the water and low hills close the bay like a U. Contemporary reports from the 2016 broadcast named this beach as the set for Shin Joon-young's seaside house. The production spent a billion won on a house that faced the swell. The house was a set. The beach is not.

You still walk the same gravel and pale sand. Pine and rock screen the cove from National Route 7, the coast road that delivers every car to this last beach in the province. In summer the county opens a small bathing season. The rest of the year the shore stays quiet enough that a pine-deck camp is the loudest thing on it. Deokgu Oncheon sits inland if you want heat after the wind.

The villa is gone. What remains is the reason they put it here: a private-looking shore with the East Sea coming in straight. Stand where the set once faced the water and you get the shot without the walls.

Photo: East Sea along Korea National Route 7, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons