Fans have been planning vacations around screens for years. People fly to New Zealand to see Hobbiton, and Dubrovnik turned into a Game of Thrones pilgrimage. Now a small county in Korea's Gangwon Province is going through the same thing, and its name is Yeongwol.
The cause is The King's Warden, a historical drama directed by Jang Hang-jun that opened in Korea on February 4, 2026. It went on to draw more than 16 million admissions, which makes it the second most-watched film in Korean box office history. Local reports said visitors to Cheongnyeongpo, the riverside exile site at the center of the story, rose more than fivefold over the Lunar New Year holiday compared with the year before, and the county had to announce early closing times when the crowds got too big.
Crowds need lunch, and Yeongwol's food is worth planning around. A note on sourcing: this guide is built from published reporting, official tourism listings and Korean restaurant write-ups, not from a visit, so treat it as a researched starting point and confirm hours before you go.
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| Gondrebap with its seasoned soy sauce, the dish most closely tied to Yeongwol's mountain cooking. |
Yeongwol Is a Mountain and River County, and Its Food Shows It
Yeongwol sits in the mountains of Gangwon Province, and its cooking draws on the two things the area has in abundance: wild mountain greens and the Donggang River that runs through the county. Both show up on the tables below.
The film itself centers on Danjong, the teenage sixth king of Joseon, who was sent into exile at Cheongnyeongpo in 1457 after losing his throne, and on the villagers living nearby. That is as much of the story as this guide will give away.
Cheongnyeongpo is enclosed by water on three sides and a steep cliff on the fourth, and the only way in is by ferry. That isolation is worth keeping in mind at lunch, because the same mountain remoteness shaped what people in this part of Korea ate for generations.
One honest caveat for film fans: accounts differ on which scenes were shot where, and at least one source says part of the filming took place at other sites, including the Seondol viewpoint in Yeongwol and the Mungyeong Saejae set in North Gyeongsang Province. Go for the place and the meals, and the exact camera positions matter less.
Gondrebap: Mountain Greens Cooked Into Rice
Gondrebap is rice cooked together with gondre, a wild mountain thistle, and served with a seasoned soy sauce that you stir in at the table. If you know pilaf, the logic is familiar: the vegetable goes into the pot with the rice instead of sitting on top of it, as it does in bibimbap. The leaves turn soft, the rice picks up a mild, earthy flavor, and the sauce brings the salt and garlic.
Gondre is Cirsium setidens, sometimes called Korean thistle or "Goryeo thistle," a perennial that grows wild on mountain slopes. The young leaves are used as namul, the seasoned vegetable dishes that anchor Korean home cooking. Korean press reports list Yeongwol among the highland areas of Gangwon where it grows, alongside Jeongseon, Pyeongchang and Taebaek. In fairness, Jeongseon gets most of the credit as gondrebap's home, so a Yeongwol bowl belongs to a regional tradition rather than a local invention.
Korean food journalism traces the dish to hard years. Slash-and-burn farmers in the Jeongseon mountains ran short of grain every spring and boiled wild gondre to fill the gap, and over time the greens grew into a signature dish. Dried gondre is common today, so gondrebap is not limited to the spring foraging season.
On a menu, look for 곤드레밥 or 곤드레나물밥. Taste a spoonful of the rice before you add anything, since it is gently seasoned, and then stir in the seasoned soy sauce (yangnyeom-ganjang) a little at a time. Set meals often add a doenjang stew and a spread of small side dishes.
For something specific to Yeongwol, a 2021 Elle Korea roundup, drawing on the county's official blog, singled out Park-gane (박가네) in Yeongwol-eup, a hanok-style restaurant known for mountain-greens set meals. It serves gondre rice and eosuri-namul rice (어수리나물밥), and the write-up says eosuri-namul was a favorite of King Danjong, a detail best treated as local lore. The sets come with 12 small side dishes and are portioned for two. That listing is five years old, so confirm the restaurant is open and check current prices.
Snail Soup and Radish Noodles: Two More Yeongwol Orders
Two local specialties fill out the table: a soup built on small freshwater snails from the Donggang River, and noodles served in dongchimi broth.
Daseulgi are river snails, and the classic order is daseulgi haejangguk, a soup traditionally eaten the morning after a long night of drinking. Donggang Daseulgi (동강다슬기), a restaurant in front of Yeongwol Station, serves a version in a fermented soybean paste broth that you season at the table with salt, perilla seeds, chili powder or sansho pepper. The menu also covers bibimbap, soft tofu stew and savory pancakes. If the word snail makes you hesitate, the Elle Korea piece describes the local snails as clean-tasting, without any fishiness. A tourism listing gives hours of 08:00 to 19:00 with last orders at 18:30, open every day.
Dongchimi is a mild, watery radish kimchi, and Yeondang Dongchimi Guksu serves North Korean-style noodles in a dongchimi broth fermented for four to six months. The bowl is thin wheat noodles in a clear, tangy broth with cabbage, chili, chives, carrot and radish, simple on paper and deeply flavored in the spoon. The shop sits in the town center, near Cheongnyeongpo and Jangneung, and the listing notes it can close early once ingredients run out.
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| Two Yeongwol orders from the river and the radish cellar: snail soup and dongchimi noodles. |
Planning the Trip Around Opening Hours
Opening hours decide the day more than distance does, so build the schedule around three fixed points: a morning at Cheongnyeongpo, a lunch that lands before restaurant breaks, and an early dinner. These are the details from official and tourism listings as of mid-2026, and all of them are worth reconfirming.
- Cheongnyeongpo: open 09:00 to 18:00 with last admission at 17:00, reached only by ferry, adult ticket 3,000 won. Listings give Monday as the closing day, along with Seollal and Chuseok.
- Yeongwol Tourism Center (126-3 Cheongnyeongpo-ro): open 09:00 to 18:00, closed Mondays, exhibition hall 10,000 won for adults.
- Donggang Daseulgi: open 08:00 to 19:00, last order 18:30.
- Yeondang Dongchimi Guksu: open 10:00 to 20:00 with a prep break from 14:00 to 17:00, last order 19:00, closed Tuesdays.
With Cheongnyeongpo closed on Mondays and the noodle shop closed on Tuesdays, Wednesday through Sunday is the easiest window. A workable day starts with the ferry at opening time, moves to gondrebap around midday, adds the Tourism Center in the afternoon, and finishes with snail soup before the 18:30 last order.
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| Add the soy sauce a spoonful at a time and stir it through the rice. |
Crowds are the other variable. At the film's peak in late winter, the county warned that entry to Cheongnyeongpo might be restricted for arrivals after 4 p.m., so a morning start was the safer plan. No current autumn crowd figures turned up in this research, which is one more reason to check the county's updates the week you travel.
The county has also been adding things to do. A news report from early September said a sightseeing tram from the Tourism Center toward the riverside area, with a trial fare of 2,000 won, and a visit-stamp program called Danjong Guardians were due to open before Chuseok. Details may have changed since, so treat them as a lead rather than a plan.
If the day has room for only one meal, make it the gondrebap and add the soy sauce a spoonful at a time, since the greens are mild and the sauce is not.
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