I'll be honest with you — I almost skipped Kingdom when it first came out. A zombie show set in the Joseon Dynasty sounded like a gimmick that wouldn't work. Royal court politics and the undead? Sure, Netflix, whatever you say.
Then I watched the first episode on a flight back to Korea, and by the time the credits rolled I was the person frantically searching "킹덤 촬영지" before the plane even landed. Because here's the thing nobody tells you about Kingdom — almost everything you're staring at, the layered gates, the eerie ponds, the throne room where a dead king rots behind paper screens, exists. Not as a fantasy backdrop. As actual palaces you can walk into this weekend if you're in Seoul.
I've now visited three of these locations myself, and I'm going to walk you through exactly where Kingdom was filmed, what's real versus what's a set, and why this show matters more to Korea's cultural export story than people realize.
Table of Contents
- What Kingdom Actually Is (For the Uninitiated)
- Why Kingdom Was a Bigger Deal Than People Remember
- The Real Palaces Behind the Horror
- Changdeokgung's Secret Garden — Where the Bodies Were Hidden
- Changgyeonggung — The Underrated Palace That Stole the Show
- Mungyeong's Fake Gyeongbokgung (Yes, Really)
- Suwon Hwaseong's Multi-Layered Gates
- Insider's Insight — Why This Show Got the Costumes and Bows Wrong
- Planning Your Own Kingdom Pilgrimage
- What's Next — Season 3 in 2026
- FAQ
- Final Thoughts
What Kingdom Actually Is (For the Uninitiated)
Kingdom is a Netflix original Korean series based on the webtoon "The Kingdom of the Gods," mixing Joseon-era political intrigue with a zombie apocalypse. A young crown prince investigates rumors that the king is gravely ill, only to discover something far worse spreading through the southern provinces. It's part political thriller, part horror, and it somehow makes hanbok and topknots look genuinely terrifying.
What sets it apart from basically every zombie show made anywhere isn't the gore — it's the setting. Joseon Dynasty Korea, with its rigid class hierarchy, its court factions, and its very specific visual language of palaces and hanok villages, turns out to be an incredible canvas for an outbreak story. The class commentary writes itself when starving peasants are the first to fall and the wealthy literally barricade themselves behind palace walls.
Why Kingdom Was a Bigger Deal Than People Remember
People talk about Squid Game and Parasite as the start of the global K-content wave, but Kingdom got there first in a quieter way. Netflix's first Korean original series was the stand-up special "Yoo Byung-jae: Black Comedy" in 2018, and the streaming giant's very first original Korean drama series was Kingdom the following year.
It took a couple more years to really blow up internationally. Korean content first cracked Netflix's global Top 10 in July 2021, and the two titles responsible were the film "Seo-Bok" and Kingdom: Ashin of the North. Ashin of the North specifically became the first Korean content to hit the Top 10 in 58 countries including France, Spain, Canada, and Mexico.
That's wild when you think about it — a sageuk zombie spinoff outperformed almost everything else Korea had put on Netflix up to that point, in markets that had zero prior exposure to Korean historical drama conventions.
The Real Palaces Behind the Horror
Here's where it gets fun for anyone who's been to Seoul or is planning a trip. Kingdom's production team didn't just build sets — they got access to actual royal palaces, which is rarer than you'd think for a commercial production.
Honestly? This is the part that hooked me. Most historical dramas film at one or two set locations and call it a day. Kingdom's crew bounced between Gyeonghuigung, Changdeokgung, and Changgyeonggung — three of Seoul's five grand palaces — plus regional sets in Mungyeong and the actual Suwon Hwaseong fortress. That's an unusually ambitious location scope for a TV production, even a Netflix-budget one.
Changdeokgung's Secret Garden — Where the Bodies Were Hidden
If you've seen the show, you remember the pond. The one where infected bodies are dumped, glowing eerily under moonlight, surrounded by perfectly manicured Korean garden landscaping that makes the horror feel almost serene.
That's Gwallamjeong, a pavilion inside Huwon, the rear garden of Changdeokgung. This pond appeared multiple times in Kingdom, most memorably as the location where numerous bodies were hidden, and the contrast between the mysterious, beautiful pond scenery and the tragic situation left a strong impression on viewers.
The Part Nobody Talks About: Huwon isn't included in a standard Changdeokgung ticket. The rear garden is a restricted viewing area that requires a separate fee from regular palace admission, and both viewing times and visitor numbers are limited. I made the mistake of showing up without booking ahead and got turned away from the garden entrance — had to come back two days later with a reservation. Don't be me. Book Huwon access in advance if Kingdom's pond scene is on your must-see list.
Changgyeonggung — The Underrated Palace That Stole the Show
This is the palace I think gets criminally slept on by tourists, and Kingdom is partly responsible for changing that. Changgyeonggung has fewer buildings and a smaller scale compared to Gyeongbokgung or Changdeokgung, but it's filled with a refined beauty that blends seamlessly with the surrounding natural environment.
What a lot of visitors don't realize is that Changgyeonggung has a genuinely weird history. It was built as an auxiliary palace to Changdeokgung and originally functioned as essentially one combined palace complex with no clear boundary between the two. It burned during the Imjin War, was rebuilt, burned again multiple times afterward, and at one disturbing point in the 20th century was literally converted into a zoo and botanical garden under the name Changgyeongwon. It wasn't until 1983 that the zoo and botanical gardens were relocated to Seoul Grand Park and Changgyeonggung was restored back into its palace form.
Tongmyeongjeon, the queen's sleeping quarters here, was used as a Kingdom filming location. It's the queen's bedchamber, the deepest and most secluded part of the inner palace quarters, oriented to face south, and its roof is unusually distinctive among palace buildings because it lacks a ridge beam along the top.
Insider's Insight: When I stood in front of this building knowing what scene was filmed there, the hair on my arms actually stood up a little. It's such a quiet, dignified space — and that's exactly why the production chose it. Horror works best against beauty, not against decay.
Mungyeong's Fake Gyeongbokgung (Yes, Really)
Here's a twist that surprises most people, including me the first time I researched it. The actual Gyeongbokgung Palace footage in Kingdom — the establishing CG shots, the scenes of characters walking through Gwanghwamun gate — none of it is the real Gyeongbokgung.
It's a film set located in Mungyeong, built at roughly 70 to 80 percent the scale of the actual Gwanghwamun gate, noticeably smaller with much lower walls than the real thing. This actually makes a strange kind of historical sense, because the real Gyeongbokgung burned down during the Imjin War and wasn't rebuilt until King Gojong's reign — so a drama set during the Joseon Dynasty's late-period factional politics era technically shouldn't have a standing Gyeongbokgung at all.
The set itself has a layered history of its own. It's a different Mungyeong set from the Joseon-era one used for other scenes — this particular structure was built by KBS for a series of consecutive Goryeo Dynasty historical dramas. So you're technically looking at a Goryeo-era set dressed up to play a Joseon-era palace, in a show about a fictional plague. Korean drama production logistics are wild.
Even the interrogation chamber scenes, where officials are tortured, were filmed at this same general complex. The building used to represent the royal residence chamber Gangnyeongjeon recreates the actual Gangnyeongjeon — the king's private bedchamber inside the real Gyeongbokgung — and using a replica of such a private royal space as a torture chamber is one of the more jarring instances of historical mismatch in the show, especially noticeable in the roofline detail.
Suwon Hwaseong's Multi-Layered Gates
The dramatic sequence with multiple taegeuk-patterned gates closing one after another? That's the temporary palace, Haenggung, at Suwon Hwaseong. Suwon Hwaseong is a UNESCO World Heritage fortress, and unlike the Mungyeong sets, this one is the genuine 18th-century article — built under King Jeongjo, not a modern recreation.
What I find genuinely cool about this specific location choice is the visual logic. The gate structure has a layered, sequential design that the production clearly used deliberately for dramatic visual composition. When you watch those doors slam shut one after another in the show, you're watching real 18th-century defensive architecture doing exactly the job it was engineered for — just against zombies instead of invaders.
Insider's Insight — Why This Show Got the Costumes and Bows Wrong
I want to flag something most location guides skip, because it says a lot about how period dramas actually get made. Kingdom's archery technique is historically inaccurate. The grip style most commonly shown in the drama is a Western-style archery grip, which wouldn't actually allow an arrow to be released properly using traditional Korean gukgung archery technique.
Real Talk: This isn't a knock on the show. It's a reminder that even meticulously researched sageuk productions make compromises — usually because Western archery grips photograph more dynamically on camera, or because the stunt choreographers trained in a different discipline. Interestingly, KBS productions have apparently corrected this in more recent historical dramas, with earlier works using the Western grip and later ones like certain Jeong Do-jeon-era productions switching to the historically accurate Korean style. Production accuracy in Korean historical drama has actually been improving generation over generation, which I think is a story worth knowing if you're someone who cares about authenticity in the genre.
Planning Your Own Kingdom Pilgrimage
If you want to do this trip properly, here's the order I'd actually recommend based on doing it slightly wrong myself:
Day structure: Start at Changdeokgung in the morning — book your Huwon (secret garden) slot in advance, it sells out. Walk fifteen minutes to Changgyeonggung next door, since the two palaces are basically adjacent. Both can realistically be done in one day if you start early.
If you have a second day and a car (or are comfortable with a regional bus), Suwon Hwaseong makes an easy day trip from Seoul — it's about 40 minutes by train to Suwon Station, then a short bus or taxi to the fortress.
Mungyeong is the outlier here. It's a few hours from Seoul by car and mostly worth it if you're already a serious sageuk fan or doing a dedicated drama-set tour, not a casual add-on.
What's Next — Season 3 in 2026
If you're catching up now, you're doing it at a good time. The Kingdom series has a simple structure — Season 1, then Season 2, then the spinoff Ashin of the North, and that release order is also the recommended viewing order with no complicated branching timeline. Across both seasons and the spinoff, that's roughly ten hours of total runtime, easily finishable over a weekend before Season 3 arrives.
As of April 2026, Kingdom holds a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.3 on IMDB, making it one of the highest-rated Korean dramas Netflix has ever released — Unlike Squid Game or D.P., which built reputations on social commentary, Kingdom built its near-perfect critical reputation primarily on genre execution and atmosphere.
Netflix officially confirmed Kingdom Season 3 production in April 2025, with release currently slated for the first half of 2026, though an exact date hasn't been announced. The story is expected to continue directly from where Season 2 left off, tracking the origins of the resurrection plant, with new territories and factions outside Joseon entering the narrative.
If you're planning a filming-location trip, honestly, do it before Season 3 drops — palace visitor numbers tend to spike whenever a new season releases and ticket booking windows for restricted areas like Huwon get noticeably tighter.
FAQ
Q: Is Kingdom based on a true story or real Joseon history? A: No. Kingdom is based on the webtoon "The Kingdom of the Gods" and is entirely fictional, though it's set during a real historical period (the Joseon Dynasty's factional politics era) and uses real palace architecture.
Q: Can I actually visit the pond where bodies were dumped in Kingdom? A: Yes — it's Gwallamjeong in Changdeokgung's rear garden (Huwon). You need a separate ticket from general palace admission, and visiting hours and visitor numbers are limited, so book ahead.
Q: Was Kingdom really filmed at the real Gyeongbokgung Palace? A: No. The Gyeongbokgung scenes use a film set in Mungyeong built at about 70-80% scale of the real Gwanghwamun gate. The real Gyeongbokgung wasn't used for filming.
Q: How many palaces appear in Kingdom? A: At least three real palaces — Changdeokgung, Changgyeonggung, and Gyeonghuigung — plus the Mungyeong film sets and the real Suwon Hwaseong fortress.
Q: When is Kingdom Season 3 coming out? A: Netflix confirmed Season 3 production in April 2025, with release targeted for the first half of 2026, though no exact date has been confirmed yet.
Q: Do I need to watch Ashin of the North before Season 3? A: It's strongly recommended. Ashin becomes a key character in Season 3, and the spinoff explains her backstory and motivations that the new season builds directly on.
Final Thoughts
What gets me about Kingdom, even rewatching clips while writing this, is how it turned palace tourism into something genre fans actually care about. I've talked to friends visiting Korea who specifically requested Changgyeonggung over the more famous Gyeongbokgung because of this show — a palace that used to get skipped by tour groups now has its own fanbase.
Have you been to any of these locations, or are you planning a Kingdom-themed trip before Season 3 drops? Let me know in the comments which palace is on your list first.
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- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/05/korean-historical-dramas-sageuk-global-popularity-data
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