I love the care that is put into placing characters into meaningful, memorable, and (usually) beautiful sets and locations in dramas. Having recently finished The Witch (and still thinking about it!), I appreciated how the ubiquitous rooftop apartment became both a haven and a prison for the FL, and when the constrained sets opened up to a different locale at the end, it made me emotional. I enjoyed seeing Undercover High School be set at my favorite university in Korea - it's such a standby location that it has the familiarity of an old friend! I also love that interiors are given as much care and thought as exteriors... the gorgeously designed and lit interiors of The Matchmakers added to the gentle magic of its story. I also love that sets aren't just the physical spaces, but also the soundscapes. In Call it Love, the cityscape included soft sounds of traffic in the background as the characters went about their day, and in Like Flowers in Sand, whenever the characters were close enough to the ocean, you could hear the waves in the background, and as they went further inland, waves were replaced with the sound of breeze through leaves. I actually keep a list of dramas that feel very place-based with ambient sounds of their settings, like countryside, seaside, or city.

I would say the gritty landscape of working life in OUR BLUES. Jeju Island is known as a tourist destination with fancy hotels, beaches, manicured golf courses and gourmet food.

Iris
It felt like a proper espionage drama and shooting on location im three different continents was an expensive gamble that paid off.

When the Camelia blooms
The town and townspeople had equal importance to the overall story the location and landscape perfectly captured that

Love Scout> I was surprised how they used very popular places in Seoul. It was nice to think I visited some of them. The FL's office was near the Museum of Art for example.

Destined with You> The story took place in Pohang and they used different places from Seoul like Pohang Space or Igari Anchor Observatory.

Some inside places like the Light Shop in Light Shop or the chocolate shop in Our Chocolate Moments were really well created for their story.

The example par excellence would be North & South Korea in the first and 2nd halves of Crash Landing on You.

Nothing says "we live in two different worlds" for our star-crossed lovers like the 38th parallel. This is a relational, geographical, ideological metaphor writ large.

I don't have to think too much: last night I finished When Life gives you tangerines, which imo excels in the use of locations, settings and production design overall. I had never seen so many sides and faces of Jeju.

And the same thing can be told about the last c-drama I have finished, The Longest day in Chang'an. It's breathtakingly beautiful.

For me it was the locations and settings used in Gil-chae's dream in My Dearest because they were used as active storytelling tools that charted her emotional and romantic arc. Each represented the different stages of her journey and the last one kept us wondering about the ending. I loved it and appreciated it even more at my recent second watch.

Cdrama

I know the prompt is for “recent” dramas and this pick of mine is almost 6 years old, but it holds a special place in my heart:

THE UNTAMED
All of the filming locations— even the ones that got a little bit of visual help via the magic of CGI— are inspired by real-life locations in China. It’s way to extensive to put into a simple post here, but AvenueX does a pretty good job summarizing everything (in article form and video form). Kudos to her
https://avenuex.ca/blog/2019/9/12/places-of-the-untamed-where-they-are-in-the-real-world#:~:text=Yun%20Meng%20Lake%20is%20a,the%20contemporary%20provincial%20capital%2C%20Wuhan.

Kdrama
Another oldie, but a goodie, are the 4 Seasons dramas of the early 2000s. Not only only did the director, Yoon Suk Ho, take the four seasons and use them as carriers and themes for each of the dramas, he also utilized the settings as well— a ski resort for winter, an autumn forest for fall, peak bloom season on an island in Joella Province for spring, and Korea botanical guardian for summer.

In My Liberation Notes, the vast differences between rural work and living vs city was really well done. I also appreciated how much time we spent with the characters on trains during their commutes, seeing what they saw and the importance of the landmarks they passed. And how hard it was to be between both worlds.

I love this prompt! I’m trained as a community planner, so my brain is always oriented to places and spaces and how people interact with those places and spaces. I especially love when the place (neighborhood or entire city) in a drama is character itself that informs the story. Dramas like Our Blues, When the Weather is Fine, Hometown Cha Cha Cha, and When the Camellia Blooms are great examples. Two recent Cdrama examples are Meet Yourself and Northward. I also love the role micro-environments like the apartment buildings in Happiness and Romance in the House can playbecause so much action happens there and it’s very informed by the place.

Oh so many! But I keep thinking about Just Between Lovers. All the locations are so beautiful and meaningful.

I love love love any kind ofsmall home on top of lots of alleys and stairs in any nationality of film/TV, but especially in K Drama. But this was the first time I heard someone articulate the class divide involved...that if her son had lived he'd promised to find her a home down below, in the city. oof.

Also I love how the MLs home has a green underwater glow and the FL literally lives in a bathhouse (Love the scenes where she's underwater, by herself or with her friend who can't walk)

I love the difference between what people with money have, in terms of luxury and view (which they close out with curtains) and what the leads have. I love how the rooftop sanctuary is handled in this one, because it's so imperfect but so perfect, and these two really have nowhere else to cal their own or find a minute's peace.

There's so much else. The fact that it's about architects means that all ideas of buildings, space, view, landscape are important, but especially in this because it's about a building that collapsed. And the way the story is told, with them searching for survivors or families of survivors, means that they're visiting so many parts of the city, and all of them feel fraught in some way. I could probably go on and on about this!

Also, I love My Mister and Misaeng (same director) for making the most out of the grey rabbit warren of an office, and making it somehow beautiful and meaningful. But also every trip outside, in both shows (including my beloved small apartment at the top of stairs and alleys) has meaning.

Oh this is something I love about Kdramas! There isn't a single show in all these years that hasn't had an interesting, to me, location! Being a designer, I'm always on the lookout for the smallest details. My list of stylish films, mostly Western, is miles long already... now add so many shows to that!

Korean production design is mostly so very good, even the most cramped home or random office is detailed to show the occupant's personality. So many times, I find myself transfixed by something in the background and wondering where I can get one, or searching for the location. I often screenshot the image and go down a rabbit hole haha.

I was entranced from my very first show, Attorney Woo, and the scene of the train going over the Han with the whales floating above... magical. This impression was compounded by my second drama, Search http://WWW... Bae Ta Mi's office, the CEO mother-in-law's artworks, there was a lady in the most exquisite hanbok (very fuzzy memory)... absolutely etched in my mind- what style and polish.

The one that caught my eye most recently has been Gong Yoo's house in The Trunk... horrible place, but just the details of the eye/fish motif everywhere, from the clock to the oculus-like skylight in that mammoth foyer, just added to the oppressive sense of being watched. I also googled that wintry hideaway they go to in the last episode. The chairman's office In Negotiation, though gloomy, contained that fabulous rockscape that I'm still searching for. Ahn Pan Seok's shows often have great art direction in general, especially his choice of cafes and bookstores (not Subway lol). I also loved the bookstore in Love Scout.
Actually, there are just so SO many to recall, and I wish I'd noted down all my memorable locations and scenes, because at this point, they're all melting together... I think, moving forward, I'm going to start listing what I liked from each show, so thanks for this idea!

Recency bias:
When Life Gives you Tangerines
Sure, other dramas were based in Jeju. What WLGYT does best is creating the essence of Jeju. I’ve never been there before, but I can feel what it’s like there. When they get to Seoul- everything feels generic.

Vincenzo that main building. So iconic. So recognizable.

Reply 1988 that one old street that connected everyone. It feels like it represents everyone’s childhood street.

Twenty Five Twenty One
That tunnel which captured the best of times and the worst of times. And I loved how they get the middle aged Na Hee-Do standing back at the tunnel with a nostalgic view.

When the Stars Gossip
Inside the spacecraft. When I feel
like puking- I think of this location.

I really do love rural landscapes, so Cdrama MEET YOURSELF was of course breathtaking. LOVE ME, LOVE MY VOICE was a drama about...nothing, really, but the landscape and food porn was on another level.

The school in UNDERCOVER HIGH SCHOOL was really beautiful.

I remember I really liked the locations in LOVE YOUR ENEMY, but I don't think the locations by themselves stood out as much as the mere number of diverse locations. It made me feel more immersed in the drama and the lives of the characters seeing them move about all the time.

I am just watching The divorce Insurance and they have gone to one of the outdoor locations I had in my mind but could not remember which drama it was in. I think the wind farm area was featured in Dear Hyrei, Plus nine boys and Scripted your destiny but I may have mixed up the great outdoor locations from those dramas with this one. I have definitely seen it more than once. At least in this drama they flagged up the location several times naming it!

My memory is not that great for these types of inquiries but if I can go back to 2017 and tvN’s CHICAGO TYPEWRITER there is one location specific scene I recall to this day.
Late in the drama (in modern Seoul) Yoo Ah-in’s and Go Kyun-po’s characters are standing across from the famous Gwanghwamun Gate and reminiscing. The importance to the drama is that the modern Gwanghwamun Gate was built in front of where the Japanese General Government Building was located. Resistance to the Japanese occupation of Korea is the story of CHICAGO TYPEWRITER. The scene across from the gate is one of most emotional to me anyway in CT.

I like the juxtaposition in time travel dramas when they pop back and forth between the modern and past versions of a location, like in Queen In-hyun's Man or Live Up To Your Name.