There's a number that tends to stop people mid-conversation when you bring it up: 51.1%.
That's the peak viewership rating My Name Is Kim Sam-soon hit in 2005, which made it the most-watched Korean drama of that entire year — ahead of every sports broadcast, every variety show, every news event. Over half of Korea's televisions tuned in for a single episode. I was young enough at the time that I mostly experienced the aftermath rather than watching live, but I grew up hearing adults talk about the "Samsoon Syndrome" the way people talk about shared national moments. It was that kind of drama.
What makes this one interesting for a location post specifically is that its filming footprint is deceptively small and deeply personal. This isn't a drama that flew its crew to Spain or built an entire fake city in Nonsan. Almost everything happened in quiet, specific corners of Seoul and Jeju that you can still walk today — including one spot that the actress herself later cited as her most memorable location from the entire production.
Table of Contents
- What Kim Sam-soon Actually Is
- The Casting Story Nobody Mentions
- Filming Location: Bonappe Restaurant and the Gangnam Kitchen
- Filming Location: Samsoon's House in Jongno
- Filming Location: The Underpass and the Stairs — Seoul's Hidden Emotional Geography
- Filming Location: Jeju and Hallasan
- The Book It Made Everyone Read
- Real Talk — What the 51% Rating Actually Meant
- Honestly? — Why This Drama Still Holds Up in 2026
- Planning Your Own Visit
- FAQ
- Final Thoughts
What Kim Sam-soon Actually Is
My Name Is Kim Sam-soon is a 2005 MBC romantic comedy following Kim Sam-soon, a thirty-year-old pastry chef with a name she finds embarrassing, a body she's been told is too big, and a self-confidence that takes hits early and often — but keeps getting back up. After a humiliating Christmas Eve incident involving a cheating boyfriend at a hotel, she lands a job at a French restaurant run by Hyun Jin-heon, a wealthy and emotionally unavailable man who proposes an arrangement: pretend to be his girlfriend, collect a salary, no feelings involved. Predictably, that plan falls apart.
The show sounds like a premise you've heard before. It plays like nothing you've seen before, partly because of how specific it is about Kim Sam-soon as a person. Unlike the perfectly groomed female leads of most Korean dramas at the time, she stumbles, eats aggressively, drinks too much sometimes, and gives speeches at exactly the wrong moments. Audiences found it hard to look away.
The Casting Story Nobody Mentions
The show almost had a completely different lead actress, which would have changed the entire texture of what it became.
The drama was originally titled "My Love Kim Sam-soon" and scheduled to air in March 2005, with Choi Jin-sil cast as the female lead. Choi Jin-sil was one of the most famous actresses in Korea at the time. She pulled out suddenly for personal reasons, the premiere was pushed back three months, the title was changed to "My Name Is Kim Sam-soon," and Kim Sun-a stepped in as a replacement.
Hyun Bin, meanwhile, had already been confirmed as the male lead and was simply waiting for a co-star to be decided. According to accounts from the time, he was happy to hear he'd be working with Kim Sun-a. The two of them had previously met briefly through a mutual stylist connection — Hyun Bin had happened to cross paths with Kim Sun-a's stylist, and had actually been photographed with Kim Sun-a as a fan before either of them knew they'd be working together.
Worth Noting: Kim Sun-a had to deliberately gain weight to play the role — the original character concept called for a heavier build, and the production changed the description to "former basketball player" to account for Kim Sun-a's actual height of 172cm. She reportedly gained over 60kg for the role and dealt with joint inflammation and significant physical side effects throughout filming. The performance she delivered under those conditions is part of what made the character feel so lived-in.
Filming Location: Bonappe Restaurant and the Gangnam Kitchen
The French restaurant Bonappe, where most of the show's kitchen drama plays out, was filmed at an actual restaurant in Yeoksam-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul. The show gave the location significant screen time, particularly the kitchen sequences where Sam-soon demonstrates the pastry skills that are supposed to be her professional identity even when everything else in her life is a disaster.
Insider's Insight: This is the detail I always find interesting when I think about early-2000s Korean drama — a French restaurant with a proper pastry kitchen as a central workplace was still genuinely aspirational for many Korean viewers in 2005. Food culture in Korea has changed enormously since then, and part of what makes the drama feel slightly period-specific is how much weight the French culinary credential carries in it. A decade later, Korean TV was full of characters running artisan coffee shops and craft bakeries without it needing explanation.
Filming Location: Samsoon's House in Jongno
Sam-soon's home — a small hanok-influenced house in a narrow alley — was filmed at a real residential location in Changui-mun-ro 5-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul. The nearby underpass on Changui-mun-ro itself also appears several times throughout the series.
This is the kind of location that requires no reconstruction and no theming. It's just a tight Seoul alleyway with the specific quality of space that older Jongno neighborhoods still have — the sense that five hundred years of city history compressed into a lane just wide enough for two people to pass.
The Part Nobody Talks About: The Jongno filming locations are collectively some of the more interesting in this series precisely because they weren't chosen for spectacle. Jongno-gu is one of Seoul's oldest and most historically layered districts, and using it as the frame for a very contemporary story about a woman rebuilding her self-worth gives the drama a quiet depth that purely Gangnam-set romcoms often lack.
Filming Location: The Underpass and the Stairs — Seoul's Hidden Emotional Geography
Two specific locations recur throughout the drama as sites where emotional weight gets deposited — the underpass near Sam-soon's house on Changui-mun-ro, and the staircase at Sopa-ro 46 in Jung-gu, which fans have since nicknamed "Samsoon's stairs."
The stairs are interesting because they're not dramatic or picturesque. They're just stairs in the middle of a city — the kind of incidental urban geography that accumulates meaning purely through repetition and context in the drama. Going back to find them after watching the show is a small, quiet thing, which is somehow exactly right for what the drama is.
Filming Location: Jeju and Hallasan
After the show ended, Kim Sun-a was asked in interviews which filming location had left the deepest impression on her. Her answer was Jeju, specifically Hallasan.
The drama used Jeju as a backdrop for some of its more emotionally pivotal sequences. There's an understated quality to how Korean dramas from this era used Jeju — less as a glamorous getaway destination and more as a place where characters could exist slightly outside of their ordinary lives for long enough to say things they couldn't say at home.
Real Talk: Hallasan doesn't look the same in every season, and the drama used its winter atmosphere specifically. If you're planning a visit specifically to chase this location, the mountain in winter — with snow cover on the upper slopes and a sharper, quieter quality to the air — is the version the show was working with.
The Book It Made Everyone Read
My Name Is Kim Sam-soon pioneered a marketing approach that's since become standard practice for Korean dramas: the literary tie-in. The show featured a specific book — Michael Ende's Momo — in a way that made it essential to the story rather than just background decor.
Following the drama's airing, sales of the Korean edition of Momo surged dramatically. This was the first time a Korean drama had used a literary property as a plot-significant tie-in that directly drove book sales, predating similar moments like Winter Sonata's connection to The Road, Goblin's use of "The Physics of Love," and My Love from the Star's Edward Tulane moment. The Sam-soon tie-in was, by most accounts, where the strategy was established as a playbook.
Honestly? I find this detail fascinating from a content marketing perspective — as someone who's spent time in international trade and watched cross-industry ripple effects from Korean cultural exports, the moment a drama started reliably moving books, records, and restaurant menus simultaneously was the moment it stopped being "just entertainment."
Real Talk — What the 51% Rating Actually Meant
That 51.1% peak rating isn't just a big number — it's a structurally different kind of achievement than what Korean dramas can realistically target in the current media environment. In 2005, Korean television operated on a small number of terrestrial network channels with no streaming competition, no cable drama ecosystem of the kind tvN would later build, and limited home video alternatives. When people watched television in 2005, they watched the same channels and largely at the same times.
According to TNS Media Korea's year-end analysis, My Name Is Kim Sam-soon was the single highest-rated program of any kind on Korean television in 2005, at 50.5% peak, ahead of every sports broadcast and every other drama. The average across the full run was 36.9%. In the Philippines, where the show also aired, it pulled over 40% viewership and eventually got a local remake called "Ako si Kim Samsoon" which aired starting June 2008.
Unlike most contemporary K-dramas that target young demographics, this one consistently performed best with women in their 30s and 40s — a demographic that Korean broadcasters had historically underserved in the romantic comedy format.
Honestly? — Why This Drama Still Holds Up in 2026
Wavve ran a "New Classic Project" in 2024 — a repackaging initiative that took famous 2000s Korean dramas and re-edited them for OTT consumption, condensing 16-episode series into 6-8 episode formats. My Name Is Kim Sam-soon was one of the first three titles selected, alongside "Sorry, I Love You 2024." The original key production staff returned for the re-edit.
The fact that Wavve specifically picked this drama for the project, rather than building entirely new content, says something about the show's staying power. The 2024 re-cut strips out the pacing issues and some of the more dated subplot mechanics, but the fundamental reason it works — the specificity of Kim Sam-soon as a character — doesn't need updating.
Planning Your Own Visit
The Seoul locations are genuinely walkable if you base yourself in central Seoul. Jongno-gu is well-served by subway (Lines 3 and 5 intersect here), and the Changui-mun-ro area in Buam-dong is about a twenty-minute walk from Gyeongbokgung Station or reachable by bus from the palace area.
The "Samsoon stairs" at Sopa-ro in Jung-gu are a separate stop — closer to Myeongdong or Hoehyeon Station on Line 4.
Jeju and Hallasan are their own separate trip. The Eorimok trail on Hallasan's western face is the most accessible route for a day hike and gives you the general highland atmosphere the drama used, even if the exact scene locations aren't marked.
FAQ
Q: What was My Name Is Kim Sam-soon's peak viewership rating? A: 51.1% according to Nielsen Korea, making it the highest-rated program of any genre on Korean television in 2005, ahead of sports broadcasts and all other dramas.
Q: Was Kim Sun-a the original choice for the lead role? A: No. Choi Jin-sil was originally cast as Kim Sam-soon but withdrew before filming began. Kim Sun-a was brought in as a replacement, with the premiere delayed three months and the title changed in the process.
Q: Which filming location did Kim Sun-a call her most memorable? A: Jeju Island, specifically Hallasan, which she cited in post-production interviews as the location that left the deepest personal impression.
Q: What is "Samsoon's stairs" and where is it? A: A staircase at Sopa-ro 46 in Jung-gu, Seoul, that appears multiple times in the drama and has since become a fan-visited location nicknamed after the show's lead character.
Q: Did the drama get a remake? A: Yes. The Philippines produced "Ako si Kim Samsoon," which aired from June 2008. A 2024 OTT re-edit for Wavve by the original production team also condensed the original 16 episodes into a 6-8 episode format.
Q: What book became famous because of this drama? A: Michael Ende's Momo. The novel was featured as a plot-significant element in the show, triggering a major spike in sales of the Korean edition — the first documented case of a Korean drama driving a literary tie-in book into mass circulation.
Final Thoughts
What I keep returning to with Kim Sam-soon is how a show about a very ordinary woman doing a very ordinary job — making pastries, going to work, trying not to fall in love with her employer — managed to become a national event. No espionage. No chaebols with tragic backstories. No terminally ill second lead. Just someone who ate her feelings and kept going.
Have you tracked down any of these Seoul locations, or made the Hallasan hike specifically because of this drama? Tell me in the comments — I want to know if the stairs live up to the mythology.
Explore More
- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/05/why-k-dramas-are-16-episodes-long-guide
- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/06/my-love-from-the-star-kdrama-filming-locations-guide
- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/04/jeju-island-seongsan-ilchulbong-sunrise-peak-travel-guide
- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/04/perfect-crown-kdrama-review-iu-byeon-wooseok
- https://www.kculture-insider.com/2026/05/korean-apartment-culture-meaning-rose-apt-song-guide
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