Winter Sonata | Nami Island Metasequoia Lane — Where Hallyu Tourism Began

This is where it starts. Not this drama — the whole thing. Korean location tourism, the industry that now sends people to Iseltwald and Jumunjin and a hackberry tree in Changwon, begins on a straight avenue of metasequoias on a river island in Gangwon-do.

Before 2002, Nami Island was a yuwonji — a picnic ground where people came to drink soju badly and shout. Winter Sonata put Kang Jun-sang and Jung Yu-jin under those trees in snow, KBS broadcast it in January 2002, Japan picked it up, and Bae Yong-joon became Yon-sama. Within a few years this was the most-visited single site in Korea by foreign tourists, alongside N Seoul Tower and Gyeongbokgung.

The island itself was manufactured. It appeared in 1944 when the Cheongpyeong Dam flooded the Bukhan River, leaving barren sand; Min Byeong-do began planting trees on it, and the avenue you walk down was somebody's deliberate act. In 2006 the island declared itself the Naminara Republic, with its own flag, currency and stamps. It added a prayer room in 2011 and halal-certified restaurants from 2014, responding to who was actually turning up.

Address says Chuncheon; the ferry terminal is in Gapyeong, which is why everyone calls it Gapyeong's island. Ferry or a ninety-second zipwire. Open eight to nine.

Walk the metasequoia lane to the far end, where the crowds thin. Every location in this collection descends from this one avenue, and the reason it worked is that somebody planted it seventy years ago with no idea what it was for.

Cover photo: the Winter Sonata avenue on Nami Island, by Penmerahpenbiru, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.