Historical drama locations/theme-parks - small review.

Nov 10, 2015 12:11 am

In 2nd half of October I visited Korea. As a true drama (and historical drama) lover, the trip wouldn't be complete if I wouldn't visit drama filming locations and I have planned to visit 4 of them. Below I'm adding my small review of them - ofc it is my own objective opinion. :)
Have you visited these places or other drama filming locations? Have you liked them?

Korean Folk Village (한국민속촌)
Official page: http://www.koreanfolk.co.kr/multi/english/

If you are looking for nice theme-park near Seoul, this is the best choice. Even tho travel time is not so short, it is easy to travel there, just get Seoul Subway(~65min trip) and then shuttle bus (~10-30min trip depending from which subway station). Price is not too high (15,000 won per person) if you consider that the area is pretty big and you can watch several performances during the day (especially wedding ceremony and folk dances are nice).

I was on the weekend, plus it was Historical Drama Festival, so there were a lot of people with kids - as it is very nice place for them to experience folk culture. You can visit from farmers’ village, magistrate office to yagban mansion. To be honest, we spend there around 6 hours and it wasn’t enough to visit everything properly, so you may want to come more time to experience everything.Also there are two major shopping/dinning areas so you won’t go hungry after all these attractions. Places is clean and well maintained.

My score: 5++/5. Highly recommended.

Shilla Millennium Park (신라밀레니엄파크)
Official page: http://www.smpark.co.kr/eng/

Well you can’t get there easily from Seoul, so you need to plan accordingly if you want to visit it. It is best to combine it with visiting whole Gyeongju Historical Area or Bulguksa Temple / Seokguram Grotto. You can get there with the public bus (~25-45min trip depending on bus line).

I’m not sure if it was due to out of summer season or early hour, but most of the buildings / attractions were closed. At first area seems big, but with not much attractions you can easily walk around pretty fast. Shilla palace and mansion were really nice. Also there were some performance “Secret of Heavenly Chest” on main stage, which I found rather not interesting as an adult (plenty of kids and teens were watching it with us), fight scenes weren’t realistic (we can forgive it as it was mythological performance :P), but it was nice then they sunk the ship! :)

All in all, if you are in Gyeongju around Bulguksa Temple area and have some spare hours, take a look here.

My score: 4/5

Goguryeo Blacksmith Town (고구려 대장간마을)
Official page: www.goguryeotown.co.kr/english/ (not sure if working), you can use KTO page.

Although this place is in Seoul it is not so easy to get there, as you need first to go with the subway and then with public bus (~30min trip). You can easily miss the correct bus stop, because there is not information in English and most of the stops are “on request”, so we had to check our current position on Google Maps to recognise where we are and where we need to get out. Bus stop tho is stylized in “ancient” style and you have sighs leading you to the object.

Entry fee was free (not sure if it was so promotion or they change it). I need to say that I expected a little more, neither place seems almost abandoned and not so well maintained (broken doors ect.) and cleaned, nor we saw any other visitors. It seems it was once more popular, but now they just keep it opened. Plus it is not so big town.

Recommend it only if you are big crazy historical drama fan, around or have some spare time.

My score: 3,5/5

MBC Dramia aka Yongin MBC Daejanggeum Park (용인 대장금 파크)
Official page: http://withmbc.imbc.com/dramia/en/

This is the MOST remote drama place, we have visited! Maybe getting to Baegam town is not so hard (rather often buses from Seoul, ~50 minute trip), but town is small and if you miss the public bus (like us), your only option would be the taxi.
Place itself is big and you can easily recognise a lot of places/scenes from historical dramas (like Queen Seonduk, Gu Family Book, Empress Ki, Hwajeong) - so it is a big plus!

Then it goes for maintenance it is clear that they are mostly taking care of it, when they are shooting dramas (or I had such impressions) as the buildings inside looks not so cleaned, furnitures and filming prop lying around. Also there was quite a renovations going on and some area was closed due to building new sets for upcoming historical drama! :D

Even tho, the place wasn’t the best maintained (and it was cold xD), I liked it as you could finally see so many of the familiar places saw in the dramas! Probably it would be better to visit it more in the season. We haven’t tried the photo session.
The biggest issue is the remote location (literally almost nothing is around there), no place to eat (some small coffee bar operated by MBC Dramia), plus rare buses make it not so easy to get there - your only option may (like ours) to take taxi, which would be the double the price of going there from Seoul + entry tickets, so if you can organise it well, I recommend to use public bus (~30 minute trip from Baegam). ;)

My score: 4/5