Australian visitor Nhung Nguyen made the hike up steep steps to a stunning Seoul park precisely because of its star turn in mega-hit KPop Demon Hunters.
The real-life settings of the animated film, fresh off a double Oscars win, have become a pilgrimage site for fans of Netflix’s most-watched original film of all time.
Naksan Park sits on a ridge high above the South Korean metropolis that includes parts of an 18.6km fortress wall built to surround the capital hundreds of years ago.
“I thought the location was very beautiful and I found out that it’s a real location so I came here,” said 29-year-old Nguyen, who said she grew up listening to K-pop.
The movie tells the tale of HUNTR/X, a popular K-pop girl group whose members live double lives as weapons-wielding demon slayers.
Their songs help create a magical barrier called the Honmoon that protects humanity.
It won best animated feature and an Academy Award for best original song for Golden, the film’s infectious anthem about empowerment, self-reliance and personal growth.
It was the first K-pop song to win the category.
In the movie, Naksan Park is where the main character, the half-human Rumi, meets clandestinely with a star-crossed love interest.
Nguyen was thrilled to be high above the city of 9.3 million at the site of a segment of the film that is special to her – one that is set to a thumping soundtrack.
“It was a scene in KPop Demon Hunters where they sang Free,” she enthused.
She wasn’t the only one who had the idea to make the trip on Tuesday, just days after Netflix’s animated hit’s Academy Award triumph.
“We came to Korea for a family vacation but we really liked KPop Demon Hunters.
“So with the kids, we wanted to come and see this place,” said Emily Han from Florida in the United States.
The movie had helped add “interest to different places that we can go and see”, said Han, who was adopted from South Korea as a child.
‘For Koreans everywhere’
The movie was seen as the latest example of the “K-syndrome” – the world’s irresistible appetite for movies, music, books, fashion and cuisine showcasing Korean experiences.
Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 Palme d’Or and Oscar best picture winning film Parasite, and the hugely popular television series Squid Game are just some of the other examples of productions out of South Korea that have made a global splash.
This will be further in evidence tomorrow when boy band BTS perform for their first concert in almost four years – an extravaganza likely to be watched by millions worldwide.
But KPop Demon Hunters isn’t strictly speaking South Korean.
It was made by Sony, directed by a Korean-Canadian and an American – Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans – and it’s originally mostly in English.
“This is for Korea and Koreans everywhere,” Kang said in her emotional acceptance speech.
“It’s a good kind of East meets West kind of movie,” said Nguyen, an Asian-Australian of Vietnamese descent.
“It was a good representation of that.” — AFP
