Sawt Falasteen - 'East meets West': KPop Demon Hunters brings global fans to Seoul's sites

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 movie 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.

It won best animated feature and an 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 movie, 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 special segment of the film that 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 wasn't the only one who had the idea to make the trip on Tuesday, just days after the movie's Academy Award triumph.

"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 movie 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 -

The movie was seen as the latest example of the "K-syndrome" -- the world's irresistible appetite for movies, music, books, fashion and cuisine showcasing Korean life and experiences.

Bong Joon-ho's 2019 Palme d'Or and Oscar best picture winning film "Parasite", 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" isn't strictly speaking South Korean.

It was made by Sony, directed by a Korean-Canadian and an American -- Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans -- and it's 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."

H.Nasr--SF-PST