Alchemy of Souls | Baekundong Garden, Gangjin — Sejukwon Under Wolchulsan

Bamboo takes the light first. Then the stepped flower terraces, the stream led through the courtyard, and Wolchulsan's Okpanbong standing over the south slope. Baekundong Garden in Wolha-ri, Seongjeon-myeon, is a seventeenth-century byeolseo laid out by Yi Dam-ro and held by the same family for twelve generations. It is Scenic Site No. 115, open to the public at 100-63 Wolha-anun-gil. In Alchemy of Souls the garden and its halls read as Sejukwon, Songrim's inner retreat.

Jeong Yak-yong slept here in 1812, named twelve views, and had Cho-ui paint the place so it would not be forgotten. The album turned up in 2001 and the garden was put back together from that record. The drama did not invent the quiet. It borrowed a scholar's compound that already knew how to hide a conversation beside running water. You walk in from the tea fields of Gangjin Dawon. The mountain stays in the same place it occupied when Dasan wrote the poems.