In a sleepy Haenam town, ‘Hope’ leaves behind more than monster footprints

In Na Hong-jin's “Hope,” aliens descend on a village near the demilitarized zone, the heavily fortified border with North Korea. But the film was actually shot at the opposite end of the country, in the sunny, southernmost reaches of South Korea.

Now, Namchang-ri — a normally sleepy coastal village of fewer than 500 residents in Haenam County, South Jeolla — is bustling with moviegoers visiting locations used during the film’s three-month shoot in 2023.

Although there is no estimate for total visitor numbers, the neighborhood has “begun to come alive,” said an official from the Haenam Cultural Tourism Foundation said. The fictional police station built for “Hope” alone has drawn an average of 139 visitors a day since the film’s July 15 release, the official added — a sizable number for Namchang-ri, which has a population of 418.

The county government seeks to jump on the success of “Hope” — which recently just surpassed 4 million admissions in Korea — into a boost for local tourism, in a region more typically known for its sweet potatoes and cabbage.

Many of the film's fictional port’s downtown scenes were filmed in Namchang-ri and its surrounding areas, including a sequence in which Hwang Jung-min’s police chief character flees from, then chases down, an extraterrestrial creature through abandoned shops and seafood stalls.

Screen tourism — travel inspired by locations featured in films and television series — is increasingly becoming a reliable driver of tourism growth, especially in remote regions with low accessibility. After “The King’s Warden” and “Salmokji: Whispering Water” turned Yeongwol and Yesan counties into tourism hot spots earlier this year, travel platform Agoda jumped on the trend with a summer campaign promoting filming locations from those two titles and series such as “Lovely Runner” (2024) and “The Price of Confession” (2025).

Whether “Hope” can help Haenam follow that same screen tourism success model will depend on whether the region can turn short-term attention into a distinctive, accessible experience that gives visitors reasons to stay and return, past data and experts suggest.

In the period drama “The King's Warden,” Park Ji-hoon's King Danjong (r. 1452-55) is sent in exile to Cheongnyeongpo, an isolated enclave surrounded by river waters and cliffs in present-day Yeongwol County, Gangwon. 

From January to the end of July, more than 801,000 people visited Cheongnyeongpo and Jangneung, Danjong's tomb, according to county data. This is more than three times than the total number of tourists who went to the two places in all of last year. The increase was clearly attributable to the film; according to the Korea Tourism Organization, visitor numbers were down 13.6 percent on year in January, but began surging in February, when the film was released. 

With the tourists came spending. According to the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, spending by nonresidents in Yeongwol, which had fallen 16.4 percent on year in the four weeks before the film’s release, rose 27.2 percent in the four weeks afterward. 

Screen tourism is more likely to endure when a filming location has historic or cultural significance independent of the production, according to Jeong Ran-soo, a professor of tourism at Hanyang University.

“Narrative is crucial in screen tourism,” he said, pointing out that people had traveled to Yeongwol, where King Danjong was historically exiled, even though many of the film’s scenes of the fictional remote mountain village of Gwangcheon-gol were shot in Mungyeong, North Gyeongsang. “That shows the importance of a destination having a story and significance of its own,” he said.

“Salmokji: Whispering Water,” meanwhile, had visitors going to the remote reservoir in Yesan County, South Chungcheong, where the film was set. Many traveled down its isolated access road at night to experience the eerie setting and share their visits online — an itinerary that went viral to the extent that local officials had to warn against nighttime visits and approaching the water after dark.

The visits fit what a 2024 study identified as a key condition for successful filming location tourism: allowing visitors to recreate an experience associated with the film, coined by the authors as “story-doing.”

The 2024 paper, issued by the International Association for Glocal Culture, also outlined that the location must be associated with a visually or emotionally symbolic scene and that it be photogenic, so that when visitors post those images online, they can draw even more people to the site.

The appeal of Salmokji lay less in built attractions than in retracing the film’s eerie setting, which drew on longstanding local folklore about spirits in the water. The reservoir had already gained some attention after appearing on the MBC program “Midnight Horror Story” (2021–), but the film brought it to a much wider audience. 

“Today’s travelers increasingly want to visit places connected to something they love or found memorable, experience it for themselves and document that experience,” Jeong said. “Fan culture is strongly tied to leaving a record and sharing proof of that experience online.

That contrasts with the Naju Image Theme Park, built as a filming location for MBC's historical drama “Jumong” (2006-07). The park cost 13.7 billion won ($9.7 million) to build, followed by an additional 3.5 billion won, but closed in 2023 after posting average annual losses of about 500 million won. 

It was part of a long list of screen tourism initiatives in Korea, where the central and local governments tried to extend the publicity generated by a popular film or television series by promoting its locations or investing in new attractions.

There is no consolidated figure for local and central spending on tourism projects tied to films, television programs or filming locations. In the case of the central government this year, it allocated 2.3 billion won to drama-related tourism projects, such as the development and promotion of filming location tours, according to an official at the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

What causes such investments to fail? “Just in general, screen tourism has a short life cycle,” said Jeong. “Purpose-built sets are also often altered for later productions or removed after filming. When [public] officials rush to restore them after a title becomes popular, the result may no longer resemble what audiences saw on screen, causing interest and visitor numbers to decline over time.”

Jeong pointed to Nami Island, a privately managed attraction in Chuncheon, Gangwon, as an example of how screen tourism sites can outlive the popularity of a single production. Rather than continuing to rely on its association with “Winter Sonata” (2004), “it has [...] continually introduced content that responds to what visitors want,” he said, citing the “Naminara Republic,” a tourism brand that presents the island as a fictional independent nation, as one such effort.

Haenam County said it was investing 1.1 billion won to transform parts of the Namchang neighborhood into a “cultural street” themed around “Hope” and the 1970s and ’80s, the period in which the film is set. According to the Haenam Cultural Tourism Foundation official, construction on the street is in its final stages and is expected to be completed Monday.

The “Hope” street in Haenam will greet visitors with battered storefront signs and the imprint of a monster’s hand. Attractions will include the film's Hopo village’s police box; the patrol car driven by the characters played by Hwang and Jung Ho-yeon; the restaurant the alien crashed through; and murals depicting the village’s open-air market and scenes from the film. On the roads are footprints left behind the creature.

To the north are the fields where characters fled the creatures. To the south, along the coast, are attractions unrelated to the movie, including Dallyangjin Fortress, a naval stronghold hailing from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), which Haenam officials hope visitors will also explore.

Prof. Jeong was cautiously optimistic, saying visitors were unlikely to choose the DMZ over Haenam simply because the film is set there. Unlike “The King’s Warden,” “Hope” does not center on the history behind its setting, such as focusing on inter-Korean tensions. Instead, its stronger hook is its retro visual appeal.

“Because the film’s retro village scenery and 1970s atmosphere are more central than its DMZ setting, there is potential for audiences to seek out the Haenam location,” Jeong said. “The key will be how effectively the county connects that imagery to the film’s narrative.”

Namchang-ri had already naturally retained much of that period's character, with aging buildings, hand-painted signs, vintage logos and the bold block lettering and brushstroke typefaces associated with Korea’s industrial and pop-culture boom dating.

“The economic benefits should go back to the people of Namchang-ri,” said the official from the Haenam Cultural Tourism Foundation. “The goal is for more people to visit, spend money at local businesses, eat, enjoy themselves and […] stay overnight. Even those coming from outside the region should not simply see the [‘Hope’ street] and leave, but also visit Haenam’s other attractions,” he added.

BY KIM JU-YEON [kim.juyeon2@joongang.co.kr]