For years, the pattern has repeated itself the same way: a drama airs, one scene gets filmed in some quiet provincial town nobody outside Korea had heard of, and within weeks that town is fielding bus tours of fans standing in the exact spot where two characters had a rooftop conversation. It’s happened to a seawall in Pohang, a bridge in Gangneung, a café nobody remembers the name of in some neighborhood that suddenly needed better signage. Korea’s TV industry has been an accidental travel agent for a decade, and until now nobody really planned for it.
That changed on June 17, when the Korea Tourism Organization signed a joint agreement with Studio Dragon — the country’s largest TV production house, behind a long list of globally streamed dramas — aimed at turning that accidental pattern into something deliberate. Instead of waiting for a show to become a hit and then scrambling to capitalize on whatever location went viral, the two organizations plan to build tourism directly into a drama’s preproduction phase: scouting scenic, regional backdrops with travel routes already in mind, before a single scene is shot.
The centerpiece of the plan has a name built for a fan to follow on foot: the “Hallyu Olle Trail,” a network of curated travel routes strung across Korea’s provinces, linking filming locations with symbolic installations and interactive spaces along the way — less a list of places to photograph and more a pilgrimage route designed for people who already know these fictional towns intimately, just not how to get there. Later this year, the Korea Tourism Organization and Studio Dragon will also open a “K-Drama Experience Exhibition Hall” inside HiKR Ground, the tourism center in central Seoul, using Studio Dragon’s catalog to physically point international visitors toward the regional towns their favorite scenes were actually shot in.
“This agreement combines the viral reach of K-dramas with the unique charm of travel to cast a new spotlight on regional areas,” Yang Kyung-soo, the Korea Tourism Organization’s executive director of international tourism, said of the partnership.
What that means in practice, if you’re someone who’s ever paused a drama to zoom in on a background sign and wonder where exactly that was: the guesswork is about to get a lot less necessary. Right now, finding a filming location still mostly means digging through fan wikis and location-tagged social posts after the fact. The plan here is to flip that — to have the map waiting for you in Seoul, at HiKR Ground, before you’ve even finished the season. If you’re planning a Korea trip for later this year, that exhibition hall is worth building a half-day around, especially if your real interest has always been the small towns behind the show rather than Seoul itself.
Sources: The Korea Times, “Korea plans new map for travelers, guided by K-drama scripts” (Jhoo Dong-chan, Jun. 18, 2026); Seoul Economic Daily, “Korea Tourism Body Partners With Studio Dragon to Boost Regional Travel” (Jun. 18, 2026).
