K-Pop Music Video Locations: Gangnam Style Isn't in Gangnam

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K-pop music video locations don’t always match the song. The clearest case is also the most famous K-pop video ever made: PSY’s “Gangnam Style” has almost no Gangnam in it. Thirteen years on, the horse-riding hall, the bathhouse, and the parking garage he actually used are still standing — none of them anywhere near the district the song is named after.

Getting around: our guide to data and map apps in Korea covers what public wifi misses and what Kakao Map or Naver Map can tell you that Google Maps still can't.

The most famous K-pop music video locations aren’t in Gangnam

Korean press worked this out within weeks of the 2012 release: PSY filmed the horse-dance stable scene at the Royal Saddle Equestrian Club, run by Hanwha Hotels & Resorts — in Ilsan-dong-gu, Goyang, Gyeonggi, a satellite city northwest of Seoul. The bathhouse and sauna scenes used a separate facility in Goyang’s Deogyang-gu, also nowhere near Gangnam. And the crew shot the parking-garage dance battle with comedian Yoo Jae-suk underground at Songdo Central Park, in Incheon — a third city, a third direction entirely.

The riding club leaned into the fame rather than hiding from it — Korean travel press was still writing it up as a functioning tourist draw years after the video’s release, and it continues operating as an ordinary equestrian school today.

That’s the real lesson here: a video built entirely around the idea of Gangnam used almost no real Gangnam, and the actual locations have outlasted the song’s viral moment by over a decade.

Gyeongbokgung — BTS’s real stage, not a set

Some K-pop location moments aren’t music videos at all — they’re one-off performances at a real place, and this one is probably the single biggest crossover between K-pop and a Korean heritage site to date. In late September 2020, BTS performed inside Gyeongbokgung palace for a special broadcast: “Dynamite” and “IDOL” in front of Geunjeongjeon (근정전, National Treasure No. 223, the palace’s main throne hall), and “Mikrokosmos” at Gyeonghoeru (경회루, National Treasure No. 224, the pavilion over the palace’s pond). Korea’s own cultural heritage authority co-produced the shoot and released official photos of it.

The performance aired on NBC’s Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and the “IDOL” stage alone had passed 22 million YouTube views within about a month. Members performed in hanbok. Unlike most entries on this list, there’s no gap between the video and the real thing here — the palace in the broadcast is exactly the palace you can visit, at exactly the buildings named. Our Gyeongbokgung guide covers tickets, hanbok rental and how to actually get in.

Yongma Land — TWICE’s debut video, ten years on

Yongma Land, a small amusement park in Jungnang-gu, eastern Seoul, closed in 2011. Nobody tore it down. The rides stayed exactly where the operators left them, and the site now runs as a private photo studio — ₩10,000 general admission (₩5,000 for students), open daily, roughly 10:00 to 18:00.

TWICE filmed part of their debut single “Like OOH-AHH” here in October 2015, using the park’s rusted, overgrown rides as a deliberately eerie backdrop. Korean fan sources who compared the footage against the real site even caught a small inconsistency: the video shows more apartment towers near the park than actually stand close to Mangu Station in real life — editors added the extra ones digitally. It’s a minor detail, but it’s the same pattern as every other location on this list — the real place is a little plainer, and a little more permanent, than the version on screen.

Gangnam Style (2012)

Not filmed in Gangnam — riding club and bathhouse in Goyang, parking garage in Songdo, Incheon

Gyeongbokgung (2020)

BTS’s real “Dynamite”/“IDOL” stage at Geunjeongjeon and “Mikrokosmos” at Gyeonghoeru — an actual performance, not a set

Yongma Land (2015)

TWICE’s debut video “Like OOH-AHH” — closed amusement park, now a paid photo studio, ₩10,000 entry

Getting there

Yongma Land and Gyeongbokgung both sit inside Seoul’s subway network — our subway guide covers fares and line colors for both. The Gangnam Style locations don’t cluster at all: Goyang and Incheon sit in opposite directions from central Seoul, and neither is a casual add-on to a Seoul-only itinerary.

A Korean eSIM is worth having regardless — Naver Map handles Korea’s transit routing far better than Google Maps does, which matters more here than at most single-city location lists.

Quick answers

Checked 6 September 2026. “Gangnam Style”’s actual filming locations — the Royal Saddle Equestrian Club in Goyang, the Deogyang-gu bathhouse scenes, and the Songdo Central Park parking-garage dance battle — from contemporaneous Korean press coverage, including Dong-A Ilbo and JoongAng Ilbo reporting on the video’s real locations. BTS’s September 2020 Gyeongbokgung performance, the exact halls used (Geunjeongjeon, National Treasure No. 223; Gyeonghoeru, National Treasure No. 224), and its NBC broadcast from Korea Heritage Service’s own press release and Yonhap News coverage of the event; view-count figures from JoongAng Ilbo’s follow-up coverage. Yongma Land’s 2011 closure, its status as a still-standing paid photo studio, and TWICE’s October 2015 “Like OOH-AHH” shoot there from Korean entertainment and travel reporting, cross-checked against fan-community frame comparisons and current listings for the site’s hours and admission. Admission fees and operating hours for both Yongma Land and the Royal Saddle Equestrian Club change; confirm before you build a day around either one.