In Brief
A K-Drama Prop Exhibit in Seoul Doubles as a Travel Planner
Seoul's HiKR Ground turns K-drama props, from "Guardian"'s red door to "Vincenzo"'s gold bars, into a kiosk that maps out a real trip to a Korean city. The K-Drama Exhibition runs through Nov. 19 on the venue's fourth floor.
Published
A red door stands in the middle of a fourth-floor gallery in central Seoul. Step through it and the wall behind opens into a map of Korea, the same trick the door pulled for the title character of "Guardian: The Lonely and Great God," except this time it points visitors toward real cities rather than another realm.
That door is the entry point to the K-Drama Exhibition, a show organized by the Korea Tourism Organization and Studio Dragon under the theme "Scenes to Destinations." It opened Sept. 18 and runs through Nov. 19 on the fourth floor of HiKR Ground, the tourism organization's showcase space in central Seoul, according to the Korea Herald.
The exhibition treats its props as waypoints rather than relics. Gold bars recall the criminal comedy "Vincenzo." A royal kitchen uniform worn by Im Yoon-ah in "Bon Appetit, Your Majesty" hangs nearby. A kiosk at the end of the route lets a visitor punch in a favorite drama scene and get back an itinerary built around a city outside Seoul, turning nostalgia for a fictional set into a plan for an actual bus or train ticket.
That final step is the organizers' real bet: that a costume case or a replica door photographs well, but a suggested destination is what gets someone to book a trip. The Korea Tourism Organization has leaned on drama tourism before, mapping filming locations for fans who arrive in Korea already knowing a coastal town or a palace courtyard from a screen before they see it in person.
The show runs at HiKR Ground's fourth floor through Nov. 19, giving visitors on a Seoul trip roughly two more months to walk through the red door before the map, the gold bars and the kitchen uniform come down.