Goblin | Hanmi Bookstore — A Yellow Shop on Baedari Alley

The shop is the color of a lemon drop. Four Korean characters sit over the door: Hanmi Seojeom. Used books lean in the window. A sandwich board and a plastic tree keep the pavement company. The alley is Baedari, in Dong-gu, Incheon, a short walk from Dongincheon Station.

Goblin put Kim Shin and Ji Eun-tak here in the middle of the series, walking the used-book street the way people actually walk it: slowly, touching spines, not buying much. After the episode aired the owner told reporters the queue started at the door. The shop has been in the family since the mid-1950s. It is still a shop.

Baedari was one of the three old book streets in the country, with Cheonggyecheon and Bosu-dong. Most of the neighbors closed. A handful remain. Hanmi kept the yellow paint that the cameras needed. Korea Herald and the Incheon press treated the place as a pilgrimage stop in January 2017 and have not had much reason to take it off the list.

Hours shift. Call if you are coming from far. The point is not a replica set. It is a working counter where the drama borrowed a wall and then left it standing.

Photo: Hanmi Bookstore on Baedari Street, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA.