I need to start this one with a confession: I was living through this exact moment in real time, and I still didn't fully understand how big it was until years later.
When My Love from the Star aired in late 2013, I was deep into my CS coursework, half-paying attention to what my mom was watching in the living room. Then I went to visit family in China the following spring, and every single conversation — every single one — somehow circled back to this drama. People I'd just met were asking if I'd ever seen Kim Soo-hyun in person. A restaurant owner near where we stayed told me his chicken orders had tripled. I genuinely thought he was exaggerating until I read the actual numbers years later researching this post.
This is the drama that didn't just create K-drama fans. It created an entire continental craving for fried chicken and beer. Let's walk through where it was actually filmed, and why this specific show became such an unlikely economic event.
Table of Contents
- The Premise — An Alien, a Top Star, and a 400-Year Wait
- The Real Historical Record Behind the Fantasy
- Filming Location: Namyangju Studio Complex
- Filming Location: Petite France in Gapyeong
- Filming Location: Jangam Reservoir and Soryeongwon
- Filming Location: Seoul Museum of Art at Deoksugung
- The Chimaek Phenomenon — When a Drama Line Broke a Supply Chain
- Been There — What People Forget About Why This Show Worked
- Planning Your Own Location Visit
- FAQ
- Final Thoughts
The Premise — An Alien, a Top Star, and a 400-Year Wait
My Love from the Star follows Do Min-joon, an alien who crash-landed on Joseon-era Earth roughly 400 years ago and has been quietly living among humans ever since, never aging, hiding superpowers like super hearing, telekinesis, and the ability to stop time. He's finally about to return home when Cheon Song-yi, Korea's biggest top star, moves in next door and turns his carefully controlled, emotionless existence completely upside down.
It's part romantic comedy, part fantasy, part gentle satire of celebrity culture — and somehow none of those tones ever feel like they're fighting each other.
The Real Historical Record Behind the Fantasy
Here's the detail that turns this from "cute alien romance" into something genuinely fascinating from a Korean history standpoint. The drama's premise is rooted in an actual entry from the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, specifically Gwanghaegun Ilgi, Volume 20. In autumn 1609, witnesses across Gangwon-do — in Ganseong, Wonju, Chuncheon, Yangyang, and Gangneung — reported seeing unidentified flying objects appearing nearly simultaneously across multiple locations.
According to the surviving accounts, these unidentified objects resembled something like a gourd or washbasin, made a thunderous sound, and emitted bright light before disappearing along with flames, all while the sky remained completely clear with not a single cloud in any direction.
Worth Noting: That's a real entry in Korea's official royal historical record, not screenwriter invention. The show's writer, Park Ji-eun, took that one strange paragraph from 1609 and built an entire alien mythology around it. Park went on to write Crash Landing on You and The Queen's Tears, but My Love from the Star is widely considered the project that launched her into being one of the most bankable writers in the romantic comedy genre.
Filming Location: Namyangju Studio Complex
A meaningful portion of the production happened at Namyangju Comprehensive Studio Complex in Gyeonggi-do, a massive film production facility spanning roughly 1,323,113 square meters — that's about 400,000 pyeong in Korean measurement, making it one of the largest film production facilities in Asia.
This studio complex isn't exclusive to this drama at all. It's also where Goblin, Six Flying Dragons, JSA: Joint Security Area, and dozens of other major Korean productions filmed scenes. If you visit, you're walking through the same backlot that built sets for some of Korea's most internationally recognized titles.
Real Talk: The studio complex actually closed to general visitors in 2018 and ceased film production operations in 2019 after being sold to a different company, so if you're planning a trip specifically to walk the same backlot, double-check current access status before making the drive out from Seoul.
Filming Location: Petite France in Gapyeong
This one is genuinely charming even outside the drama context. Petite France is a small French-themed village that opened on the shores of Cheongpyeong Lake in 2008, built around the theme of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. Every building follows old French countryside architectural style, and the complex includes exhibition halls, performance venues, and a three-story Saint-Exupéry memorial hall with a music box house.
Here's what's interesting — Petite France had already built a reputation as a filming location well before this drama used it. It wasn't a one-hit wonder location; it was already a known quantity in the Korean production world, and this show simply brought it to a much bigger international audience.
Insider's Insight: I think this location choice says something about how Korean production teams scout — they don't always need a brand-new exotic backdrop. Sometimes the most effective fantasy setting is a slightly surreal, already-existing themed village that photographs like nowhere else in the country.
Filming Location: Jangam Reservoir and Soryeongwon
Jangam Reservoir appears in one of the drama's gentler, more romantic stretches — the kind of early-relationship sweetness where the biggest stakes are whether to hang a padlock on day 100 or plan an overseas trip by day 1,000.
Soryeongwon is a different kind of location entirely. Aside from a short forest path, there isn't a tremendous amount to see at the site itself, and the surrounding forest area is technically private property with restricted access. If you're planning a visit, the better move is pairing it with nearby Boguangsa Temple, which holds a connection to Soryeongwon — it houses the portrait and memorial tablet of Lady Choi, Crown Prince Yeongjo's biological mother, who is interred at Soryeongwon. Boguangsa has its own film pedigree too, having served as a filming location for director Kim Ki-duk's film Dream.
The Part Nobody Talks About: A lot of location guides list Soryeongwon without mentioning that there's genuinely not much to photograph there beyond the forest path. I'd treat it as a quiet add-on to a Boguangsa visit, not a standalone destination.
Filming Location: Seoul Museum of Art at Deoksugung
Right along the atmospheric stone wall path of Deoksugung Palace sits the Seoul Museum of Art, one of the city's representative public art museums. Beyond viewing the art collection itself, the building's modern architecture combined with its small, charming outdoor garden makes it a genuinely good photo backdrop on its own merits.
This location appeared in the drama's emotionally loaded final episode — Do Min-joon's time-travel return and his reunion kiss with Cheon Song-yi were filmed here, which is probably why fans still specifically seek this museum out among Seoul's many cultural sites.
The Chimaek Phenomenon — When a Drama Line Broke a Supply Chain
Okay, this is the part of the story I find genuinely remarkable, and it's not an exaggeration for SEO purposes — it's documented economic history at this point.
In one scene, Cheon Song-yi, recovering in a hospital bed, looks out at falling snow and says something close to "on a snowy day, it's chicken and beer." That single line, paired with the visual of her actually eating chimaek, triggered a consumption phenomenon across China that nobody in production could have predicted.
Chicken and beer wasn't even a familiar pairing in China before this. Sales of fried chicken in China had actually been struggling earlier that year due to a bird flu outbreak that scared consumers away from poultry — and this drama reversed that collapse almost overnight. One chicken restaurant owner reported orders roughly doubling, and in Shanghai specifically, customers were reportedly lining up for more than three hours just to buy Korean-style fried chicken.
Here's the number that genuinely stunned me when I found it: the Washington Post ran this story on its front page under the headline "Chinese officials discuss why China can't make a drama like Korea's," reporting that the drama had racked up roughly 2.5 billion views online in China and topped national viewership rankings. A member of China's National People's Congress reportedly spent an entire morning session lamenting why China couldn't produce a hit on this scale.
Honestly? The most telling detail for me isn't even the chicken sales. It's that Chinese tea/chat platforms built entire seasonal features around this drama — China's WeChat-equivalent messaging app at the time had a feature where typing "chimaek" would automatically change your background to a snowy scene. That's not marketing. That's a cultural phenomenon big enough to get baked into consumer software.
Been There — What People Forget About Why This Show Worked
I want to push back gently on the idea that this was just lucky timing or star power. Kim Soo-hyun and Jun Ji-hyun were both already big names, sure. But Jun Ji-hyun hadn't done a drama in 14 years before this role, and there was real industry skepticism about whether her film-star presence would translate to the TV format.
The show ended up earning a 24.0% nationwide average viewership rating according to Nielsen Korea, finishing first in its timeslot for its entire run. It picked up three wins at the 50th Baeksang Arts Awards including Jun Ji-hyun for Best Actress and Kim Soo-hyun for Most Popular Actor, plus Best Drama honors at the Korea Drama Awards and the Seoul International Drama Awards.
What I think actually made it work — beyond the chemistry, beyond the fantasy hook — is that it triggered fashion, beauty, and dining trend cycles simultaneously across both Korea and China at the same time, which almost never happens that cleanly with a single piece of content. Most hits move trends in one market first and spread later. This one seemed to hit two markets nearly in sync.
Planning Your Own Location Visit
If you want to chase a few of these spots in person, here's roughly how I'd sequence it:
Petite France and Jangam Reservoir are both in the general Gapyeong/Cheongpyeong area of Gyeonggi-do, so they pair naturally into a single day trip from Seoul — figure on needing a car or a tour bus package, since public transit out there is limited.
The Seoul Museum of Art at Deoksugung is fully walkable in central Seoul and easy to combine with a regular Deoksugung Palace visit, since the museum sits right along the palace's famous stone wall walking path.
Namyangju Studio Complex is the one to research most carefully before going, given the operational changes since 2018 — confirm current access before driving out.
FAQ
Q: Is the alien story in My Love from the Star based on real history? A: The alien premise is fictional, but it's directly inspired by a documented 1609 sighting recorded in the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, where witnesses across Gangwon-do reported unidentified flying objects.
Q: Why did this drama cause a fried chicken shortage in China? A: A single scene where the female lead eats fried chicken and beer while saying a now-famous line about snowy days triggered a massive consumption trend, with some restaurants reporting wait times of multiple hours and sales increasing several times over.
Q: Can I still visit the Namyangju filming studio? A: The general visitor experience facility closed in 2018, and film production operations ended in 2019 after a change in ownership. Confirm current access status before planning a visit.
Q: What's the difference between Soryeongwon and Boguangsa Temple as filming locations? A: Soryeongwon itself has limited sightseeing beyond a short forest path and restricted private-property access. Nearby Boguangsa Temple, connected to Soryeongwon's history, offers more to see and is the recommended pairing.
Q: How successful was My Love from the Star compared to other Korean dramas of its era? A: It earned a 24.0% nationwide average viewership rating, topped its timeslot for its entire broadcast run, and won Best Drama at multiple major Korean television awards including the Baeksang Arts Awards.
Q: Who wrote My Love from the Star, and what else are they known for? A: Screenwriter Park Ji-eun wrote this drama, and later went on to write Crash Landing on You and The Queen's Tears, both major international hits.
Final Thoughts
What stays with me about this show, more than a decade later, isn't even the romance — it's how it proved that a single well-placed cultural detail in a Korean drama can ripple into completely unrelated industries on the other side of a border. Nobody set out to revive China's poultry market. It just happened, because a character said the right line at the right moment.
Have you ever had a craving triggered by something you watched in a K-drama? Tell me in the comments — I have a feeling chimaek isn't the only example out there.
Explore More:
- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/04/perfect-crown-kdrama-review-iu-byeon-wooseok
- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/04/ultimate-guide-korean-chimaek-culture-is-so-crispy
- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/05/why-k-dramas-are-16-episodes-long-guide
- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/05/korea-hidden-gem-travel-destinations-2026-local-guide
- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/04/why-k-dramas-feature-fried-chicken-subway-ppl-culture
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