Sunshine Studio

Character

After Mr. Sunshine finished, its Nonsan streets kept working. Sunshine Studio later hosted period productions including Pachinko and Tale of the Nine Tailed 1938 while the same early-1900s set opened to visitors

Nonsan City supplied the site and infrastructure; drama producer Hwa&Dam Pictures and broadcast-content company SBS A&T invested in the filming complex. Nonsan City describes the result as Korea’s first public-private drama theme park

Across roughly 6,000 pyeong, hanok, Western-style buildings, tiled houses and Japanese colonial-era building types compress early-1900s Hanseong into a small screen city. The clock-towered Glory Hotel is the most recognizable landmark, but the effect comes from the mixture: different architectural languages occupy the same streets because the fictional city was built around an era of rapid transition

The experience

The studio is organized as streets, storefronts, alleys, courtyards and tracks, with period façades repeatedly opening into photo, display or café spaces

Glory Hotel gives the visit an indoor anchor. Its first floor contains video and props connected to Mr. Sunshine; the second floor operates as a café. Period-costume rental turns the surrounding streets into the main photo setting, while the operator also uses parts of the complex for exhibitions and occasional events

The visual range is compact enough for an ordinary visit of about an hour, the duration suggested by the studio itself. Photography, costume rental or close attention to production design can easily make the same footprint take longer

History

Sunshine Studio was built for the 2018 television drama Mr. Sunshine as part of the larger Sunshine Land area in Yeonmu-eup. Its financing structure was unusual for a drama set: Nonsan provided land and infrastructure while private production partners invested alongside the city in the filming facilities

The set recreated a symbolic version of Hanseong in the early 1900s, mixing Korean, Western-influenced and Japanese colonial-era architecture to support the drama’s story. When the series ended, the built environment remained in Nonsan and opened as a visitor attraction

That survival gave the studio another production role. Later period dramas, including Pachinko and Tale of the Nine Tailed 1938, used the site, so the streets continued functioning as filming infrastructure after the show that originally justified their construction

Before you go

Sunshine Studio sits beside the wider Sunshine Land complex, but the studio is separately operated and ticketed. Its admission and closure day apply only to Sunshine Studio; neighboring 1950 Studio and military-experience facilities follow their own rules

General studio tickets are sold on site, with no separate advance reservation for ordinary visits. Commercial or organized filming follows a different application and rental process