The Southern Roads Stitched Into Mokpo

The Mokpo of the 1950s is not in Mokpo. What survived did so as a walled town, a backlot, an island, each preserved for its own unrelated reason.

A stage that burned for barely a decade

Something nags at you while watching Jeongnyeon. This gukgeuk, performed entirely by women who take the male roles too, when exactly did it exist?

Women's gukgeuk began in 1948. Some thirty singers, led by Park Nok-ju and including Kim So-hui, Park Gwi-hui and Im Chun-aeng, formed the Women's Gugak Society, and that October they opened with Okjunghwa at the Sigonggwan theater in Seoul. The following year Haennim Dalnim was a runaway hit that pushed conventional changgeuk aside, and the form kept its momentum even in wartime refuge. Then, from the late 1950s, the audience thinned fast, and by the early 1960s the whole thing had effectively collapsed. Film arrived, television arrived, and the crowd moved on.

That is barely more than a decade. The late 1950s the drama depicts are the last few years when this stage burned brightest.

Which makes the filming locations unusual. Jeong-nyeon's hometown is Mokpo, but that Mokpo is not in Mokpo anymore. The alleys and theater streets of the 1950s are long gone from the real city. So the production went looking across South Jeolla and Gwangju, found five places, and stitched them into a single town.

The hometown begins on Cheongsando

The house where Jeong-nyeon lives, perched on a slope where the sea meets the mountain, was filmed on Cheongsando in Wando. So was the scene where she runs across a field of pink blossoms and soft grass to meet Mun Ok-gyeong, the prince of the Maeran troupe.

That path carries another story. The field Jeong-nyeon runs across is where the film Sopyonje was shot. Two stories about leaving home to learn to sing crossed the same ground thirty years apart. The site of Jeong-nyeon's house also sits close to where the drama Spring Waltz was filmed.

Cheongsando has no bridge; you can only reach it by ferry. That inconvenience kept the island slow, and the slowness eventually became its name. A network of walking routes known as the Slow Roads links the villages, the hills and the shore. It is a poor fit for a rushed day trip, so give the ferry timetable room.

Two stories about leaving home to learn to sing crossed the same field thirty years apart.

The washing place and the wall at Naganeupseong

The lane where Jeong-nyeon walks home with her sister after selling fish, the washing place where she does laundry with the village children, the spot where Mun Ok-gyeong hands her an invitation, and the road she runs down to meet her again were all shot at Naganeupseong in Suncheon.

Naganeupseong is a Joseon-era walled town, designated a national historic site. The ramparts and thatched houses survive in their original form, and rarer still, people live inside them today. Laundry hangs in the yards; smoke rises from the chimneys. It is a village rather than a set, and that texture of ordinary life carried straight onto the screen.

Walk the path along the top of the wall and the thatched roofs open up below you. Old trees stand throughout the town, so the season announces itself as you go. The whole loop is flat and easy enough with children.

Suncheon's backlot, playing downtown Mokpo

The theater street in downtown Mokpo, where Jeong-nyeon and her sister go to see Jamyeonggo with the invitation from Mun Ok-gyeong, is the Suncheon Drama Filming Site. The later scene where Jeong-nyeon, having left the troupe and ended up at a police station, meets producer Park Jong-guk was shot here too.

The site recreates Korean streets from the 1960s through the 1980s. Love and Ambition opened its run, then Giant, East of Eden and King of Baking, Kim Takgu passed through, and Pachinko used these same alleys. One backlot can carry that many eras because swapping the signage and the props buys you a decade in either direction.

You can rent an old school uniform and wander the lanes, which fills half a day pleasantly even if you are not chasing locations. It sits in the same city as Naganeupseong, so pairing the two into one day is the natural move.

Cheonseondae, where the tide decides

The sea where Jeong-nyeon dives for shellfish after wrecking her voice through bad practice and leaving the troupe, and where Heo Yeong-seo comes to pull her back, throwing a Chuwolmanjeong record into the water so that Jeong-nyeon dives straight in after it, is Cheonseondae on Nangdo in Yeosu.

Nangdo used to require a boat, but the Nangdo Bridge opened in February 2020 and you can now drive over. The road stops short of Cheonseondae, though. Park at the trail lot at 499-24 Nangdo-ri and walk in, and wear something sturdier than sneakers, because the path is rough.

One more thing to check. Nearby Nampo Lighthouse is only reachable at low tide. People turn back from it all the time for not looking, so find the day's low water before you set out and plan around it.

A red brick house in Yangnim-dong, Gwangju

Thrown out of the Maeran troupe over a misunderstanding, Jeong-nyeon decides to become a singer and goes to find her teacher Patricia. That house is the Hollytree Hill Guesthouse in Yangnim-dong, Nam-gu, Gwangju.

It is a red brick building of about eighty years, put up originally as a missionary residence. The drama Doona! was filmed here as well. Yangnim-dong still holds a number of early twentieth century buildings, so it rewards a walk through the lanes rather than a single stop. The hills and narrow streets make for good walking.

That Jeong-nyeon sets gukgeuk aside and goes to learn a different kind of singing in a Western brick house does not feel like an accident. The distance between the stage she left and the music she is reaching for shows up first in the architecture.

That she leaves gukgeuk behind and walks into a Western brick house does not feel like an accident.

How five places became one town

Here is the map. Home and the fields are Cheongsando in Wando. The village lanes and the washing place are Naganeupseong in Suncheon. The downtown with the theater is the Suncheon backlot. The sea after her voice gives out is Nangdo in Yeosu. The singing outside gukgeuk is Yangnim-dong in Gwangju. One character's teens and twenties, split across five places.

The reason it scattered this far comes down to time. The Mokpo of the 1950s is not in Mokpo. Just as women's gukgeuk vanished from the stage in little more than a decade, those streets were erased from the city. What survived did so as a walled town, a backlot, an island, each preserved for its own unrelated reason.

So this trip is less about ticking off locations than about reassembling a city that no longer exists. Two stops in Suncheon fit into one day, then cross to Yeosu and stay the night; Yangnim-dong slots in on the way there or back. Cheongsando is tied to the ferry schedule, so it is easier on the nerves to plan it as its own trip from the start.