True Beauty | Yunbosun-gil — The Alley Where Prince Comics Never Sold Comics

Anguk Station Exit 1 puts you on Yunbosun-gil before you have decided to look for a drama. The lane is short. Hanok eaves lean over accessory shops and coffee. Number 31 is the address every pilgrimage map still prints as Prince Comics.

In True Beauty the shop was where Ju-kyung and Lee Su-ho kept meeting as if the meeting were an accident. They ate ramyeon under a rental-comic sign the set department hung on a real storefront. The building was YN ANIMA, a leather-goods workshop and small cafe, not a comic rental. The stone-wall path beside it is the shot that survives when the sign comes down.

Yunbosun-gil takes its name from the house of Yun Posun, the fourth president of the republic, a few hundred metres up the same lane. The road is 423 metres from Gwanhun-dong to Jae-dong. You can walk it in six minutes if you do not stop. Pilgrims stop. They photograph the wall, the roof tiles, the doorway that once pretended to sell manga.

The ramyeon is gone. The alley kept the light the camera liked. Stand on the stones and the meeting still looks possible.

Photo: Epicgenius, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.