Goblin | Yeongjin Breakwater — The Birthday Cake That Called Him

The groin at Yeongjin Beach is a working wall against the East Sea.

It was poured to keep sand from leaving the shore. In the first episode of Goblin, Ji Eun-tak sits on that concrete with a cake in her lap, blows out the candles, and a nine-hundred-year-old soldier appears with buckwheat flowers as if the sea had been waiting for the wish.

The official pin is not Jumunjin Port. It is the fourth sand arrester from the left, on the coast road between Yeongjin Beach and Jumunjin, at 1609 Haean-ro. Gangneung City put the stop on the local bus map. VisitKorea listed the same stretch. On busy days people still queue for the middle of the wall, red muffler in one hand, plastic bouquet in the other.

The water is the same colour it was in 2016. Grey-blue under cloud. Hard green when the sun hits the current. The wind comes straight off the water and takes the heat out of a coat in seconds. Nothing about the place was built for a summoning. The drama noticed a wall that already faced the open sea and let a girl sit on it alone.

Walk out only as far as the spray lets you. The boards and tetrapods are wet. The photograph people want is short: two figures, the horizon, no cafe sign in the frame.

Stand there after the queue thins. The sea keeps the same work it had before the series. That is the ordinary fact the first meeting used, and it is still loud on a weekday morning.

Photo: Choe Kwangmo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons