Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (Goblin) — Filming Locations & Real Places

After Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, that red door keeps coming back to me.

No handle, and somehow it connects Seoul to Canada whenever it opens. I figured it had to be a set — turns out it's real, in Québec, on Petit Champlain street.

It even has a name — 'La Porte Rouge.' Since the show aired, it's apparently become Québec's top photo spot.

The mailbox where Eun-tak drops her letters is really in the lobby of the Château Frontenac, and the hotel that plays Kim Shin's own hotel is a real landmark too.

What surprised me even more — the breakwater in Jumunjin where the two of them first meet, and the snowy hill called 'Goblin Hill,' are both real filming locations in Gangwon Province. Take away the one magic door, and this romance mostly happens on actual ground.

주문진항, 강릉 · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

'Dragon Peak' ski resort is the real Yongpyong Resort in Pyeongchang, and Eun-tak's school, Jungang High, turns out to be the same campus used in Lovely Runner and Our Beloved Summer — a pilgrimage site among pilgrimage sites.

Looking back at the story itself, I get why it's still talked about this much. General Kim Shin of Goryeo, undefeated in countless wars, earns both the people's reverence and young King Wang Yeo's fear.

Framed as a traitor by the scheming Park Joong-heon, Kim Shin is killed despite his sister Kim Sun's sacrifice — and that's where the show actually starts: a god's punishment revives him as an immortal Goblin with a sword permanently through his chest, unable to die.

Wang Yeo, the one who drove him to that death, is wracked with guilt and eventually takes his own life. After 600 years of punishment, he's reincarnated as an amnesiac Grim Reaper — so the relationship between the Goblin and the Grim Reaper is already a tragedy before the story even begins.

In the present day, a dying, pregnant Ji Yeon-hee begs for her unborn child's life during a hit-and-run, and Kim Shin answers, saving both mother and child. The resulting daughter, Ji Eun-tak, is born an unregistered soul, with a mark proving she's the Goblin's bride and the ability to see ghosts.

강문해변, 강릉 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Orphaned at nine and raised abusively by her aunt's family, Eun-tak unknowingly summons Kim Shin on her 19th birthday, blowing out candles alone on a breakwater in Jumunjin.

She follows him through the magic door all the way to Québec City, boldly declares she'll marry him, and proves her identity by describing the exact shape of the sword in his chest.

The real romance here is watching a once death-seeking Goblin slowly come to want a life with her — but it's built on a cruel rule: the moment his bride removes that sword, he vanishes. The closer they fall in love, the closer the ending gets. It's crueler than it first looks.

Meanwhile the Grim Reaper falls for Sunny, a woman who runs a samgyetang restaurant — who turns out to be the reincarnation of Kim Shin's sister, Kim Sun. And the Grim Reaper has to face the devastating truth that he himself was once King Wang Yeo.

It's a story about gods and mortals, life and death — but the real twist is that its backdrop is somewhere you can pull up on a map right now. That's exactly what makes you want to go stand in front of a handle-less door.

It's Kim Eun-sook and Lee Eung-bok's 2016–2017 tvN Friday-Saturday drama, and it apparently became the network's highest-rated series ever. Revisiting it, I get why the Gong Yoo, Kim Go-eun, Lee Dong-wook, Yoo In-na, Yook Sung-jae lineup is still being talked about.