Where the Hometown Lights Come Back On

Samdal-ri is on no map, yet the sea and the oreum that make up the village are all there, along Jeju's eastern coast.

A low hill where the planes pass, Dodubong

Once you have landed at Jeju Airport and collected your bags, most trips rush off somewhere. Welcome to Samdal-ri catches that hurry for a moment and sets it down on a low hill ten minutes from the airport by car. This is Dodubong. It is where a young Sam-dal and Yong-pil once sat side by side, counting the planes passing overhead, and where the dream of leaving for Seoul first began to swell.

The summit is a fifteen-minute walk away. Climb the dirt path and Jeju City opens on one side, the wide-open sea on the other. It is clear why the drama places this scene at its very beginning. Leaving and returning are folded together beneath the same sky, and the landscape says so before any line of dialogue does.

Leaving and coming home fold together beneath one sky. Dodubong is where those two feelings first meet.

A red lighthouse and a windswept shore, Gimnyeong

Follow the coastal road east from Dodubong and you reach Gimnyeong in Gujwa-eup, the beach that lends the most to the mood of Samdal-ri village. The water at Seongsegi Beach shifts from emerald in the shallows to deep teal further out, and above it a red lighthouse stands in a row with white wind turbines.

Many of the drama's scenes pass across the colors of this shore. Each time the characters argue, make peace, and turn back to face the sea, the waves of Gimnyeong move behind them. Windy days are common here, so the sound of the surf and the turning turbines carry together, as natural as a village's background hum.

Summer fills the beach with swimmers, but in spring and autumn Gimnyeong is quiet. Walk the breakwater out toward the lighthouse and you understand why the camera lingered here so long.

The shade of a tree that has kept watch, the Pyeongdae-ri hackberry

Fifteen more minutes from Gimnyeong brings you to Pyeongdae-ri, where an old hackberry tree spreads a broad shade over the heart of the village. Trees older than any person are common in Jeju's villages, and beneath them people have long gathered to rest and to talk.

The warmth of community that Welcome to Samdal-ri portrays comes from shade like this. The story of a village taking Sam-dal back in after she loses everything in Seoul: if that embrace had a specific place, it would surely be under a hackberry like this one. The tree still stands where it always has, keeping watch over the village.

Nearby lies Bijarim, a flat forest of thousands of torreya trees more than five hundred years old. Walk its red earthen path slowly and you feel, in your own body, how a tree endures time. It is a route where a feeling that began with a single hackberry widens out to a whole forest.

A harbor where the store lights came on, Ojo-ri

At Jeju's eastern edge, close to Seongsan, lies Ojo Harbor, a small and quiet port along Jeju Olle Trail Course 2. The production remade an old warehouse here into the village store of the drama. In the evenings this was the warm, lit spot where Sam-dal and her friends gathered to sit.

The harbor water is calm. Seongsan Ilchulbong is not far off, and at the hours when its silhouette shimmers on the water your pace slows on its own. This quiet, a step back from the noise of the tourist trail, is surely the tempo the drama wanted to give to Samdal-ri.

To make room beside you without any fuss. The quiet of Ojo Harbor is the temperature of a village called Samdal-ri.

Samdal-ri as a map of the heart

Samdal-ri is on no map. Instead the sky of Dodubong, the water of Gimnyeong, the tree shade of Pyeongdae-ri, and the harbor of Ojo-ri gather to form a single village. Stitching together real places along Jeju's eastern coast, the drama built a hometown that exists nowhere yet anyone might long for.

So this trip is at once a visit to filming locations and a walk along a map of the heart. The sea you saw on screen lies before your eyes, and the wind passes over the spots where the characters sat. You meet again, on foot, the story of someone who left and came home.

A route for the traveler

Begin in the west at Dodubong. It is close to the airport, and the summit holds a generous first impression of Jeju. Next, follow the coastal road to Gimnyeong. Pass the lighthouse and the sea, catch your breath at the Pyeongdae-ri hackberry and Bijarim, and finally reach Ojo Harbor and Seongsan at Jeju's eastern tip, and a day's route completes itself naturally.

With a rental car you can cover it in a day, but if you want to linger at each place, two days is better. Spring and autumn are the finest walking seasons. Taking your time is how you enjoy this drama and this coast together.