The Glory — Filming Locations & Real Places

Finish binging The Glory and you can't help googling exactly where the fictional Semyeong is supposed to be.

Everyone says Cheongju, so I looked into it — but it turns out the production has never officially confirmed any specific real city as Semyeong's model.

What is confirmed is something else entirely. The park where Dong-eun learns baduk among elderly locals, Cheongju Jungang Park, is confirmed as a real filming location by the Cheongju Film Commission. The scene under the park's 900-year-old ginkgo tree was shot right there.

And on a rewatch, that park scene isn't just a quiet healing stroll. It's genuinely chilling once you realize the reason she's learning baduk there in the first place was already part of the revenge plan — Dong-eun spends years preparing, and eventually becomes a teacher at the very school Yeon-jin's daughter attends. From the start, all of it was part of the plan.

종로3가 기원거리 일대, 서울 종로구 — 더 글로리 촬영지 인근 · Wikimedia Commons

Yonghwasa Temple, where the scenes of religion and hypocrisy intertwine, is also a real filming location. It's still an active temple today, so it's worth visiting quietly if you go.

Yeon-jin, Jae-jun, Sara, Hye-jeong, and Myeong-oh — the five perpetrators look bound together no matter how much time passes, but the show's real pleasure is in watching them slowly betray one another over class, desire, and buried secrets. Dong-eun barely has to lift a finger before they start tearing each other apart.

And once you know that Yonghwasa's religion-and-hypocrisy scene lines up exactly with the cracks forming inside that group of perpetrators, the temple stops feeling like just a backdrop and starts feeling like part of the story's actual architecture.

What's interesting is that the baduk boards aren't only in Cheongju. Two giant 258-square-meter baduk boards were actually built at Cheongna Lake Park in Incheon, and they're still standing there.

청주시 청원구 일대 — 더 글로리 주요 촬영 도시 · Wikimedia Commons

And the Season 2 finale — Dong-eun and Yeo-jeong drinking beer by the red lighthouse on a snowy night — that's a real lighthouse at Sodol Port in Gangneung. Knowing that this scene, the one Dong-eun finally reaches after years of revenge, happens to be filmed in writer Kim Eun-sook's own hometown makes that ending land a little differently.

Because this show deals with school violence, though, there's one thing this site wants to be clear about: we try not to turn real victims, residents, or facilities into tourist attractions. So we introduce Cheongju's real landmarks, but deliberately don't pinpoint the specific spot where the fictional bullying takes place.

Exactly what happens in the moment Dong-eun finally reappears in front of Yeon-jin after years of preparation, and how the five perpetrators' stories end afterward — I won't spell all of that out here. But it's worth saying up front: this revenge story doesn't end in pure satisfaction alone.

If you go to Cheongju, chasing down Semyeong might be less rewarding than simply following the filming locations that are actually confirmed — Jungang Park, Yonghwasa.

And if you ever find yourself in Gangneung, standing in front of the lighthouse at Sodol Port and thinking, 'it took her years to get here,' isn't a bad way to spend a moment either.