Australian visitor Nhung Nguyen made the hike up steep steps to a stunning Seoul park precisely because of its star turn in mega-hit KPop Demon Hunters.
The real-life settings of the animated film, fresh off a double Oscars win, have become a pilgrimage site for fans of Netflix's most-watched original film of all time.
Naksan Park sits on a ridge high above the South Korean metropolis that includes parts of an 18.6-kilometre (11.5-mile) fortress wall built to surround the capital hundreds of years ago.
"I thought the location was very beautiful and I found out that it's a real location, so I came here," said 29-year-old Nguyen, who said she grew up listening to K-pop.
The film tells the tale of HUNTR/X, a popular K-pop girl group whose members live double lives as weapons-wielding demon slayers.
Their songs help create a magical barrier called the Honmoon that protects humanity.
On Sunday night, KPop Demon Hunters won Best Animated Feature and another Academy Award for Best Original Song for Golden, the film's infectious anthem about empowerment, self-reliance, and personal growth.
It was the first K-pop song to win the category.
In the film, Naksan Park is where the main character, the half-human Rumi, meets clandestinely with a star-crossed love interest.
Nguyen was thrilled to be high above the city of 9.3 million at the site of a special segment of the film, which is set to a thumping soundtrack.
"It was a scene in KPop Demon Hunters where they sung Free," she enthused. "The wall I feel... is very iconic."
She was not the only one who had the idea to make the trip on Tuesday, just after the film's triumph at the Academy Awards.
"We came to Korea for a family vacation, but we really liked KPop Demon Hunters. So, with the kids, we wanted to come and see this place," said Emily Han from Florida in the United States.
The film had helped add "interest to different places that we can go and see", said Han, who was adopted from South Korea as a child.
K-crazy
KPop Demon Hunters was seen as the latest example of the 'K-syndrome' - the world's irresistible appetite for film, music, books, fashion, and cuisine showcasing Korean life and experiences.
Bong Joon-ho's 2019 Parasite - winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes and Best Picture at the Oscars - and the hugely popular television series Squid Game are just some of the other examples of productions out of South Korea that have made a global splash.
This will be further in evidence on Saturday when boy band BTS perform for their first concert in almost four years - an extravaganza likely to be watched by millions worldwide.
But KPop Demon Hunters is not strictly speaking South Korean.
It was made by Sony, directed by a Korean-Canadian and an American - Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans - and it is originally mostly in English.
"This is for Korea and Koreans everywhere," Kang said in her emotional acceptance speech.
"It's a good kind of East-meets-West kind of movie," said Nguyen, an Asian-Australian of Vietnamese descent.
"It was a good representation of that."
Source: AFP
