Why Stories About North Korea Fascinate South Koreans
There is a saying in Korea that North Korea is "the closest foreign country."
Geographically, it is only a short drive away. In some places, the distance between North and South Korea is less than a few kilometers. Yet for ordinary South Koreans, it remains one of the hardest places in the world to visit.
We share the same ancestors, speak almost the same language, celebrate many of the same traditional holidays, and enjoy foods that originated long before the peninsula was divided.Yet after more than 70 years of separation, the two Koreas have evolved into completely different societies. That contradiction—being so similar and yet so different—creates an endless curiosity. Perhaps that is why dramas and films set in North Korea have always attracted Korean audiences.
One of the greatest examples is Joint Security Area (JSA), directed by Park Chan-wook and released in 2000. Rather than portraying North Korean soldiers as simple enemies, the film showed them as ordinary young men capable of friendship, laughter, and compassion. It became a landmark film because it reminded audiences that the people on both sides of the border share the same humanity despite decades of political division. More than twenty years later, Crash Landing on You approached the same subject from an entirely different angle.
Instead of focusing on military conflict, espionage, or politics, it chose romance, humor, friendship, and everyday life. It asked a simple but powerful question:
What if we stopped seeing each other as enemies and simply met as people?
More Than Curiosity
For many international viewers, North Korea is mysterious because it is one of the world's most isolated countries. For South Koreans, however, the curiosity is much more personal. Almost every Korean family has been touched by the Korean War in one way or another. Some families were permanently separated. Some lost relatives they never saw again. Others still don't know where grandparents, uncles, or cousins ended up after the peninsula was divided. Although younger generations may feel less directly connected to those stories, the division of Korea continues to shape everyday life. The Korean War has never officially ended.
The two Koreas remain technically at war under an armistice agreement rather than a peace treaty. Because of this reality, stories involving military service, border crossings, defectors, negotiations, and espionage naturally create dramatic tension. Yet Crash Landing on You avoids reducing North Korea to simply a place of danger. Instead, it introduces warm-hearted neighbors, loyal friends, caring mothers, mischievous soldiers, and ordinary families trying to live meaningful lives.
The result is something surprisingly human.
What Moved Me Most
What impressed me most was not the romance itself. It was the opportunity to imagine everyday life in North Korea. Before watching this drama, I knew little about places like the jangmadang, the informal markets where many North Koreans buy and sell daily necessities. I had heard occasional news reports, but I had never really thought about how people there actually lived.
The drama doesn't claim to be a documentary, nor is every detail perfectly accurate. Nevertheless, it paints a vivid picture of daily routines—neighbors sharing food, women chatting in village alleys, soldiers teasing one another, children playing outside, and families simply trying to get through another ordinary day. Watching these scenes made North Korea feel less like an abstract political concept and more like a place where real people laugh, worry, dream, and love, just as we do. That realization stayed with me long after the final episode.
The Country We Still Cannot Visit
Throughout the series, one thought kept returning to me. North Korea is so close that, in theory, I could reach it in less time than it takes to fly to Japan. Yet it remains a place I cannot freely visit. That strange reality gives the drama an emotional depth that few international audiences may fully understand.
As I later learned, many of the North Korean scenes were not filmed in North Korea at all. Instead, they were recreated in places across Gangwon Province, Chungcheong Province, Jeju Island, Mongolia, and Switzerland. The production team built elaborate village sets and carefully selected landscapes that could convincingly portray life north of the border. The results were remarkable. Many scenes felt astonishingly authentic. Still, knowing they were recreations left me with a quiet sense of sadness. No matter how realistic the sets were, they could never completely replace the real mountains, villages, and people of North Korea.
Perhaps that is why this drama left such a lasting impression on me. It reminded me that there is a country only a short distance away that I may never have the chance to see with my own eyes.
One Day, I Hope...
One day, I hope the Korean Peninsula will become a place where people can travel freely across the border. If that day ever comes, North Korea will probably be the first country I choose to visit. Not because it is exotic. Not because it is mysterious. But because it is, in many ways, a forgotten part of our own story.
And perhaps, someday, filmmakers will no longer need to recreate North Korea in studios or distant countries.They will simply film there. When that day comes, I hope to watch a Korean drama that was truly shot on location in Pyongyang, Kaesong, or the mountains beyond the Demilitarized Zone. Until then, Crash Landing on You remains more than just a romance. For me, it is a reminder of the closest place I have never been—and the place I most hope to see someday.
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