Somewhere in North Chungcheong Province, there’s a reservoir that horror-content creators have quietly called a “haunted spot” for years — the kind of place that shows up in spooky YouTube videos and gets maybe a few dozen curious visitors a month. Then a low-budget horror film called “Salmokji” used it as a filming location, and someone posted a map screenshot showing roughly 100 vehicles heading toward the reservoir at the same time, late at night, with photos circulating of long lines of cars backed up along the nearby roads. That’s what a film hit actually looks like on the ground in Korea right now, and it’s happening in two completely different genres at once.
The bigger of the two is “The King’s Warden,” a historical drama from director Jang Hang-jun that’s become one of the biggest Korean films in years — it crossed 10 million viewers in just 32 days after its Feb. 4 release, the first Korean film in two years to hit that milestone, and as of mid-April had drawn more than 16.4 million viewers, making it the second most-watched film in Korean box office history, according to the Korea Times. Its main filming location, Cheongnyeongpo in Yeongwol County — the site historically tied to the exiled King Danjong during the Joseon Dynasty — saw visitor numbers climb up to eightfold during peak periods, a surge that lined up conveniently with both winter vacation and the March 1st holiday. Nearby historical sites, including Gwanpungheon Hall and Jangneung Royal Tomb, rode the same wave, turning the area into a connected tourism route almost overnight. One nearby city, Cheonan, even released a promotional video built around the tomb of a controversial historical figure who appears in the film — an unusual marketing angle, but apparently a working one.
“Salmokji” is the smaller, stranger half of the story. Made for a relatively modest 3 billion won (about $2.04 million), the horror film hit its break-even point of 800,000 viewers within just seven days, riding word-of-mouth rather than a marketing budget. Its plot — a film crew encountering something at a reservoir after a strange figure shows up in a road-view image — turned a place that already had a niche haunted reputation into the latest “set-jetting” pilgrimage site, minus any official tourism push behind it.
What both stories point to is the same thing: Korea’s film industry just came off a sluggish year where the top domestic film didn’t even clear 6 million viewers, and now a genuine hit — in any genre — can redirect real travel traffic to a specific provincial spot within days, no formal campaign required. If you’re chasing these locations yourself, treat the surge as temporary: the eightfold jump at Cheongnyeongpo tracked with a specific holiday window, and niche reservoir tourism built on a horror movie’s momentum has a short shelf life by nature. Go while the wave is still cresting, not after you’ve heard about it from someone who already went.
Sources: The Korea Times, “From ‘The King’s Warden’ to ‘Salmokji,’ film locations turn into tourism hot spots in Korea” (Xportsnews, Apr. 16, 2026).
