As Korea’s foreign visitor numbers continue setting records through the first half of 2026, filming-location tourism tied to popular dramas and films is increasingly extending beyond Seoul’s traditional tourist core into regional destinations including Gangwon Province’s coastal cities and Busan — a decentralization pattern that mirrors the broader geographic spread already visible in K-pop concert tourism moving toward suburban venues in Goyang and Incheon.
Gangwon’s coastal cities, particularly Gangneung and Sokcho, have benefited from their frequent use as drama filming locations, leveraging existing tourism infrastructure built around the region’s beaches and seafood dining scene to accommodate visitors whose original motivation for the trip was a specific show’s coastal setting rather than the region’s more traditional tourism draws.
Busan, meanwhile, draws filming-tourism interest partly in anticipation of its own signature event: the Busan International Film Festival, running October 6-15, 2026, which has increasingly functioned as an anchor event around which film-and-drama-focused tourism itineraries are built, extending the city’s appeal beyond festival-week visitors to a broader year-round audience of cinema-interested travelers.
The regional spread benefits directly from Korea’s now-formalized travel agency practice of rapidly building filming-location tour packages once a drama proves popular, a responsiveness that travel companies including Hana Tour have developed specifically to capture fan-tourism demand before a show’s cultural moment fades — a capability that now extends readily to regional locations rather than remaining Seoul-centric.
Regional tourism boards have welcomed the trend as a meaningful opportunity to capture a larger share of Korea’s booming inbound tourism revenue, which has historically concentrated disproportionately in Seoul relative to other Korean cities’ genuine cultural and scenic assets.
Source: Korean regional tourism coverage of filming-location tourism expansion to Gangwon and Busan, 2026.
