Gunsan's old port streets, where Korean cinema goes to film the past

The window of Chowon Photo Studio (초원사진관, Chowon Sajingwan) is not large. On a weekday morning there is usually one person standing at it with a phone raised, waiting for the reflection of the street to clear. Behind the glass sit framed portraits in the style of a neighbourhood studio from the late 1990s: a family in its best clothes, a graduate in a gown, a young woman squinting into a flash. The studio exists because a film needed one. Gunsan (군산), a port on Korea's west coast, decided to keep it after the crew went home. The town made the same choice on street after street, and that is why Korean film and television keep coming back here when a script calls for the past.

A photo studio built for a film, kept for the people who saw it

Christmas in August (8월의 크리스마스, Parworui Keuriseumaseu) is Hur Jin-ho's quiet 1998 film about a small-town photographer who knows he is ill. It was shot largely in Gunsan, and the studio was its centre of gravity. What stands now on the corner in Wolmyeong-dong (월명동) is kept by the city as a stop for visitors, not as a business, with stills from the film and the photographer's counter arranged inside. Whether the door is open on a given day depends on the city's schedule, so count on the exterior and treat the interior as a bonus.

The film's pace suits the town. There are no chase scenes, just long takes of shop fronts and a parking warden crossing streets that still look much the same. Walk a block in any direction and you find the rest of the film's world: two-storey shophouses with tiled roofs, a hardware shop with its stock spread on the pavement, alleys too narrow for a car. A blue street sign reading 시간여행마을 (Sigan Yeohaeng Maeul, Time Travel Village) marks the district, though the older residents rarely call it that.

사진관 문이 닫힌 날에도, 사람들은 창 앞에서 한참을 머문다.

Sinheung-dong and the house behind the garden wall

South of the studio, on the slope of Sinheung-dong (신흥동), stands the house that period films keep borrowing. Its official name is the Sinheung-dong Japanese-style House (신흥동 일본식 가옥), but most signs call it Hirotsu House (히로쓰 가옥, Hirotsu Gaok). It is a two-storey timber merchant's house from the decades before 1945, with sliding doors, a raised wooden corridor, and a garden of clipped pines and a stone lantern behind a low wall. Scenes for the gambling film Tazza (타짜) were shot here, along with a run of mid-century productions that needed an interior no studio could fake cheaply. Visitors usually walk the garden and look into the rooms from the corridor. How far inside you can go depends on the conservation rules posted at the gate.

A short walk east is Dongguksa (동국사), a Buddhist temple built in the Japanese manner. Its single steep roof carries none of the painted dancheong (단청) that covers the eaves of most Korean temples, so after a week of temple visits it looks oddly bare. Zhang Lu's film Gunsan: Chanting the Goose (군산: 거위를 노래하다) follows two people drifting through this part of town while they stay in an old Japanese-style guesthouse. If you can find it with subtitles, it is good preparation for the walk, because it shows the neighbourhood at the pace it is best seen.

The harbour road that plays the bank and the customs office

Down by the inner harbour, along Haemang-ro (해망로) in Jangmi-dong (장미동), the street turns to stone and brick. The Old Gunsan Customs House (구 군산세관) is a small red-brick building that mixes European styles. Next door, the former Bank of Joseon Gunsan branch (구 조선은행 군산지점) now holds the Gunsan Modern Architecture Museum (근대건축관), and a nearby former bank building houses the Gunsan Modern Art Museum (근대미술관). A production that needs a 1920s banking hall or a customs counter can find one here with the walls already aged.

The Gunsan Modern History Museum (군산근대역사박물관) sits along the same waterfront. One of its floors recreates a street of period shops at full size, and it helps to see it first. Once you have, you start reading the real facades outside differently: the second-floor shutters, the narrow frontages, the shop names painted directly onto plaster. The harbour is quieter than the museums. Fishing boats tie up along the old quay, and the seafood stalls at the far end of the road do their real trade early, before the tour groups arrive.

Gyeongam-dong and the rented school uniforms

The most photographed screen-style spot in Gunsan was not built for any production. The Gyeongam-dong Railway Village (경암동 철길마을) is a stretch of old freight line that ran between houses so close you could touch them on both sides. Trains no longer use it, and the track is now a walkway lined with small shops. Many of them rent out old-style school uniforms, the black jackets and peaked caps of earlier Korean classrooms, so couples and friends can stage the kind of retro scene Korean dramas have made familiar.

Next to the uniform racks are stalls selling dalgona (달고나), the pressed sugar candy you try to crack along a stamped shape, and old-fashioned snacks in paper cups. It gets far busier than the old town, so come early, when the light runs along the rails and the shutters are only half up. Each shop sets its own rental terms, deposits and time limits and writes them on a board out front. Read the board before you change.

Getting there, when to go, and what to check first

From Seoul, express and intercity buses run to Gunsan from the Seoul Express Bus Terminal (서울고속버스터미널) and Central City. Trains on the Janghang Line (장항선) from Yongsan also reach Gunsan Station (군산역). Either way, expect a few hours of travel. Gunsan Station is well outside the old town, so allow for a local bus or taxi ride in. The bus terminals are closer to the centre. Check timetables and fares on Kobus for buses and Let's Korail for trains. In the old town, everything here is walkable except Gyeongam-dong, which is a short taxi ride away.

Spring and autumn suit the walk best. Summer on this coast is humid, and the harbour wind in winter is sharp. The museums and heritage houses keep weekly closing days and change their hours with the seasons, so check the Gunsan city tourism site or call the 1330 Korea travel hotline before you plan around any interior. For food, Lee Sung-dang (이성당), a long-running bakery in the old town, draws a queue for its red-bean bread (단팥빵, danpatppang) and vegetable bread (야채빵, yachaeppang). The town is also known for jjamppong (짬뽕), a spicy seafood noodle soup. Many kitchens serve lunch only or close when they sell out, so eat early. The mistake to avoid is treating Gunsan as a half-day add-on to somewhere else. The streets only start to look like a film set once you have walked them slowly, at the hour when the shops are opening and no one is filming at all.