Squid Game — Filming Locations & Real Places

I started watching Squid Game just for the novelty of adults playing childhood games as a life-or-death survival competition.

A few episodes in, though, it's clear the show is after something far heavier than game-show thrills. The premise that most contestants were already pushed to the edge by debt, failure, and exclusion lands scarier than the games themselves.

I got curious about which island the game venue is actually on, but it's not on any map. It's a name that only exists within the show — filming actually happened on islands near Incheon, not Jeju.

What's more unsettling, honestly, are the scenes outside the game. Gi-hun's neighborhood, Ssangmun-dong, isn't a set — it's a real Seoul neighborhood in Dobong-gu, and reportedly reflects director Hwang Dong-hyuk's own experience of actually living there.

세빛섬(서울 반포 한강공원) — 오징어 게임 VIP 라운지 장면이 촬영된 장소 · Wikimedia Commons

The biggest shock after finishing Season 1 was old man Oh Il-nam. Player 001, the frailest and most innocent-seeming contestant, turns out to be the actual creator of the entire game. Finding out that a man who'd grown so rich he'd gotten bored designed all of this just to feel something by gambling with other people's lives genuinely gave me chills.

The Front Man's identity hits the same way. The masked figure running the games turns out to be Hwang In-ho — the very brother that Detective Hwang Jun-ho had been desperately searching for. The moment that's revealed, it's clear this was never just a survival thriller.

The games themselves are unsettling enough, but I also learned that those elaborate sets were entirely built at a studio in Daejeon.

Yeouido, meanwhile, was deliberately used as an urban contrast to the world inside the game — placing the extreme and the everyday side by side on purpose.

As the story continues into Seasons 2 and 3, Gi-hun gives up his winnings and jumps back into the game to try to fight it from the inside. The choice to go back in after already getting out shows this was always a story about what you survive for, not just whether you survive.

교동도(인천 강화군) — 기훈의 어린 시절 오징어 게임 장면이 촬영된 마을 · Wikimedia Commons

By the end of Season 3, Gi-hun doesn't make it out. He sacrifices himself to protect another contestant's baby — and fans still argue endlessly about whether the story had to end that way.

What really gave me chills, though, was the scene after the credits. A stranger playing ddakji on an LA street corner, quietly inviting someone into a game, hints that this whole system might be about to spread from Korea out into the rest of the world.

The airport in the final act isn't a set either — it's the real Incheon International Airport.

For a story built around extreme survival, the backdrop stayed rigorously, recognizably Seoul — which is exactly why this one holds up on a rewatch.

I've never been to Ssangmun-dong, but if I ever walk through that neighborhood, I'll probably look twice, knowing it isn't just an ordinary street — it's a place carrying the director's own memories.