True Beauty | Yonsei University Yeonhui Hall — Ivy on a School That Was Never a School

Saebom High School never existed. The ivy did.

Yeonhui Hall sits on the Sinchon campus of Yonsei University at 50 Yonsei-ro, a stone academic block whose walls have been trained into green. In True Beauty this is the face of the school Lim Ju-kyung walks into after she has learned to put a face on. Uniforms cross the same lawn. The tower of Underwood Hall holds the axis behind it. Students still cut through here between lectures.

The production borrowed a working university because a real high school would not give them this much sky. Yonsei has hosted other dramas on the same lawn. Extraordinary You used it. Reply 1994 used it. The ivy does not care which title is shooting.

Stand at the foot of Yeonhui Hall on a weekday morning and the scene is ordinary. Bags. Bicycles. A security post that will ask what you are photographing. The drama needed that ordinary. Ju-kyung's secret only works if the school looks like a place where people already know how to look at one another.

The campus is open enough to walk. Do not treat the lecture halls as a set. The ivy is the only extra that stayed.