True Beauty | Namhae German Village — Tile Roofs on a Hill Built for Return

The houses face the water the way a German slope would, except the sea below them is the Korea Strait.

Namhae County names German Village, in Mulgeon-ri, among the True Beauty locations shot in mid-January 2021. Ju-kyung and Su-ho's Namhae days needed streets that did not look like Seoul. The county had already built those streets for another reason.

In 2001 Namhae offered land to Koreans who had worked in Germany as miners and nurses and wanted a place to come home to. The timber frames and red roofs were imported taste on a Korean hillside. Tourists arrived later. The drama arrived after that.

You walk the lane between the houses and the view opens toward Mulgeon Harbor. Cafes occupy ground floors. Residents still live upstairs in some of the buildings. The village is a neighborhood first. Treat the gardens as yards.

What the series borrowed is the odd peace of the place: a European silhouette against a southern Korean winter, two people trying on a life that is not yet theirs. The hill keeps the silhouette after the crew leaves.

Photo: Choi2451, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Filming credit: Namhae County Cultural Tourism.