Pocheon Art Valley Filming Location – Tour from Trazy

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Visiting Pocheon Art Valley has been on my mind for a while since it got featured in Jeon Ji Hyun and Lee Min Ho’s ‘Legend by the Blue Seas’ drama back in 2016 – his final drama before entering the army. Time flew by in a blink of an eye and he recently got released from the army sometime in end April! Looking forward to his new drama again!

If you are traveling to South Korea, do check out Trazy’s website as they are many cool and unique activities that you can take part in! They even sell concert and music festival tickets, exclusively for foreigners as well! The tickets to Lotte World, Everland SM Town Museum and more is also cheaper when you buy online via them, compared to at the door!

Anyway, I was very thankful for the chance to visit Pocheon Art Valley as part of a Day Tour organized and sponsored from Trazy (Pocheon Art Valley/Herb Island + Strawberry Farm)

There were 3 convenient pick-up locations: Hongdae, Myeongdong and Dongdaemum History and Culture Park Station and I was picked up at about 1:40pm.

It was a small 18-seater bus, decent size and I was really impressed with our tour guide Mina – as she can speak 3 languages – Korean, English and Mandarin – catering to our group of multi-nationalities.

As part of the tour, we were given an opportunity to pick our own strawberries at a farm in Pocheon!

We were each given a box (approximately 400-500g worth of strawberry) and we could pick strawberries from the designated lanes that they have assigned to us! It was really simple and all our boxes were full in no time!

One considerate thing to note is that they elevated soil of the strawberry to make it more eye-level for us. My previous experiences in Japan required me to bend down but this was so much better!

To be honest, I am very impressed with Korean strawberries! It was much better than the ones I had in Japan and every single strawberry that I picked was equally sweet and juicy!

Also, I realised that it doesn’t matter whether you pick the big ones or the small ones. As long as they are red enough, it is sweet and juicy.

After we have filled our boxes, the owner treated us with some waffles and jam – strawberry and apple. Gosh, the jam was so delicious that I ended up buying a box of each flavour. It coms in two packaging – a glass bottle (the usual type) and also in sachet form – which makes it very convenient when you’re traveling.

After the strawberry farm, we were driven off to Pocheon Art Valley – the star location for the day!

Why do I like this place so much? Well, it looks so beautiful in pictures and it has been featured in at least 3 popular Koraen Dramas!

The entrance fee is 5,000W and you will have to pay additional 4,500W for the monorail. These fees are covered as part of the tour so you do not have to worry about it!

legend-of-blue-sea-pocheon-art-valley

  1. Legend of the Blue Seas – https://www.flyhoneystars.com/2016/11/25/filming-location-legend-of-the-blue-sea/
    • Where the mermaid first saw Lee min ho character in the ancient dates.
  2. Moon Lovers (Scarlet Heart)
    • This was the park where IU was in the first episode when she fell into the water while saving a boy.
  3. Hwayugi (Korean Odyssey) – https://www.flyhoneystars.com/2017/12/30/filming-location-hwayugi-a-korean-odyessy/
    • This was one of the few final scenes where lee seungi wanted to summon some dragon for some rites.

The icon of this art valley is the beautiful lake, known as Cheonjuho Lake. It was formed by smearing waters and rains in the pit made by excavating granite and the deepest part is 25m.

So beautiful even without any edits. We visited at about 4-5PM so the afternoon sun may have been a little too harsh. It could be prettier with the morning sun.

Yes, this was the platform where all filming took place at.

As we visited on a Tuesday afternoon, there wasn’t really much visitors – which was really awesome – as I could take photos without any human disturbance =p

Apart from the lake, there’s also an astronomical observatory but I did not enter it as the guide said it was fully in korean =/

On weekends, there could be cultural activities and performances as well.

Should you be fit enough (well, if I can do it, you should be able to do it too) and not afraid of heights, don’t forget to climb up the slopes to get a higher perspective of the cliffs and valleys. It was a good exercise but the going down part can be a little intimidating if you have fear of heights as you will have to go down some steep spiral staircase.

Apart from the attractions within the park, I also enjoyed the view of the layering mountains. If we had more time in this area, I wouldn’t mind having a picnic and drink with nature’s company. It was such a peaceful and serene afternoon visit and the weather in May was very good.

Our last destination for the tour was Pocheon Herb Island!

This is a pretty old-school attraction built in 1998 an I’m pretty impressed that they manage to maintain this place for more than 20 years! Sadly, it is not as popular as the Art Valley but it still has it fair share of K-drama filming – Hyun Bin’s Hyde, Jekyll and Me and a running man episode was filmed here!

Unlike the name, this place is not an island at all. It is accessible by road and it seems like a whimsical dated fairytale village with random themed attractions ranging from Santa Village land to Venice to Rome’s Trevi fountain. They also had areas which featured the streets of old Korea (I guess it will be a lot more appealing to the locals).

At least they bothered to innovate and added on the LED lights and illumination show(s) which was switched on after 7PM. We had a glimpse of the lights before heading back to our bus at 7:30PM.

The photo above was a reflection of the 90s – where H.O.T. was the hottest group ever. It was pretty interesting as I was trying to explain to explain to the spanish girl in my tour group on how sensational and big H.O.T. was then. Like there were the Godfathers of K-pop or something.

There were random spots above which showed how things used to be like in traditional Korea? Sadly, I couldn’t relate much to it, except that such places get featured in the traditional day dramas.

There were many photo spots available and I’m sure you will love this place is you like taking pretty photos!

 

We had to return to the bus at about 7:30PM and it took about 70 to 80 mins for us to return back to Seoul.

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If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you will notice that I’m usually not a fan of joining tours but visiting Pocheon Art Valley was really inconvenient to visit with Public Transport. It takes about 70 mins on public transport from Seoul to Pocheon and the local bus transport within Pocheon could be infrequent and you’ll end up taking Taxis (that’s if you can flag one down). Really thankful to trazy and the tour organizers which make visiting these out-of-the-way filming locations accessible!

The price of the tour is also really reasonable as well!

They are running a 30% promotion (for the month of May) and the price is only 47,000W per pax!

Don’t miss out on this chance and book now!

Other recommended Filming Locations Trazy Tours/Tickets to check out:

 

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