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  >  Tips   >  DIY Itinerary   >  Travel Diary: Trip to South Korea Part 4 – DIY Goblin K-Drama Tour

I’ll let you in on a secret. More than a decade ago, when I was a huge K-Pop fangirl (raise your hand if you started fangirling K-pop and K-drama oppas in the early 2000’s!), I really wanted to go to Korea to see my favorite Korean boyband, Shinhwa. While that didn’t happen, because I thought getting a visa was so hard, and basically because all my money went to merch, I made sure that now that I am a grownup, and I know that getting a South Korean visa is a breeze, that I would at least go there, if not to see my idols from the past, to at least do a DIY K-Drama tour.

I am not as hardcore a fangirl as I used to be, and I rarely ever watch K-dramas anymore (pffft, I just marathoned Black on Netflix. Teehee), but I thought it would be a great experience to check out some of the famous TV drama locations in Seoul on my second trip to South Korea.

As much as I would’ve loved to go to all the places in my favorite K-dramas, most of them were too old, the places probably no longer exist (like the house in Full House TT_TT). Also, there’s the issue of time as we only had a few days in Seoul. With these considerations, we decided to just go for just Goblin locations. We did go to other places featured in other K-dramas, because they were accessible or were really part of our travel itinerary because they are popular tourist spots like the Nami Island from Winter Sonata. I won’t be posting them here though for now, I will maybe add them later or do a separate post.

FYI though, there are tons of K-Drama Tours available for tourists, you can just get one of those for a fee. I decided against it as they usually lump other dramas I know nothing about (or haven’t watched) into the mix and I feel like that’s a waste of money.

Also, just a quick shoutout to FlyHoneyStars. Her post on Goblin filming locations served as my guide in planning our K-drama itinerary.

Mini Goblin Tour

Goblin was the most popular K-drama when we went to Korea, and my sister and I loved it. So we decided to give it a go. Lol, I was pretty sure I had visited more places. But looking at my pictures, there weren’t really a lot. I really wish we could’ve gone to more but we weren’t prepared and it was exhausting, to be honest. We couldn’t even go to the locations that were near where we stayed in Gangnam because we kept putting it off until it was too late! Anyways, I’ll be sure to be more ready next time.

  • Location 1: Hanmi Bookstore in Incheon

Hanmi Bookstore

As there were a few places in Incheon where the drama was shot, my sister and I, despite the amount of time and effort it would take for us to get there, decided to just go for it. We only had a couple of days to do all of this K-drama location-hunting, we had an early start. We took the train and got off at Dongincheon station and then walked from there. I was quite surprised that there weren’t a lot of tourists flocking the bookstore. Although, we did come during the summer, so there weren’t a lot of travelers that time compared to maybe Autumn or Winter.

  • Location 2: Statue of Eoyeongdaejang in Incheon

The statue was behind me.

This was the location where Eun Tak summoned Kim Shin while he was eating steak. The statue itself wasn’t visible, because it was quite a few steps away. The place they were at had a view of Incheon. It wasn’t shown in the series, but there were houses nearby. I remember thinking how lucky those people were to have had access to Gong Yoo during the shoot. I could’ve taken a lot of stolen shots! Although I bet that would’ve been forbidden by the crew or his management.

To get there, we took a bus from Mirim Theatre, and then walked. We had to rely heavily on Google Maps and got lost for a bit. It is quite a long uphill walk though, but once you’re there, you can’t miss it. There are posters like this one below for all the locations we went to.

It’s as if they knew the places were going to be tourist spots sooner or later. Going to these two locations took most of our time, believe it or not. So we really didn’t have any left to explore the other places. That’s the downside to DIY-ing. You have to do all the work, take public transportation, look for the places yourself. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun too if you’re up for an adventure.

  • Location 3: Yongdap Station

Yongdap Station

Another pretty easy place to locate. We consulted Google Maps for the fastest route to take going to Yongdap station.From we stayed, we walked to the nearest bus stop and took a bus. When we got off, there was a short walk going to the station.

This location was the bridge where Sunny and the Grim Reaper met.

Need to do this more!

Out of all the locations I visited, I liked the ones in Incheon the most. Although I didn’t get to visit a lot of the places because of unpreparedness on my part, this was a trip I won’t forget. And I learned a lot to do this a lot better next time.

Check out my other posts about my trips to Korea:

  1. Getting Around Seoul
  2. MyeongDong
  3. N-Seoul Tower
  4. Arriving in Seoul

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