- Address
- 6 Cheongha-ro 200beon-gil, Cheongha-myeon, Buk-gu, Pohang-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do · 054-232-4002
- Getting there
- KTX to Pohang Station, then a local bus or a 40-minute taxi north to Cheongha. Free public car park at the market.
- Hours
- Shops and the filming-location street: daytime, year-round. The five-day market runs on dates ending in 1 and 6 (1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st, 26th) and is a morning market — traders start packing up around midday.
- Admission
- Free
Cheongha Gongjin Market
Still operatingThe market is working and free to walk through — but the drama's café is now a photo set, not a café.
The Pohang five-day market that played Gongjin in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha — and then took the drama's name. The shopfronts are still there, one of them still cooking, and the market runs on the 1st and 6th.
What Korean visitors report
🔎 Last checked · August 2026Korean-language visitor reports carry details that English guides do not — what is still standing, what closed, and what the walk from the car park is actually like. We read them and summarise the facts here.
- The name changed
- It was Cheongha Market (청하시장), a plain rural five-day market. After the drama it was rebranded Cheongha Gongjin Market — Gongjin being the fictional town — and that is the name on the sign, on the map listings and in the address. If a guide still calls it Cheongha Market you may not find it on a Korean map app.
- Start at the toilets
- There is a board beside the toilets at the entrance mapping which shop played which place in the drama. Read it before you walk in and you will not miss anything; skip it and most of the shopfronts look like ordinary shops.
- The café is not a café
- Oyun's bar — 'Coffee by Day, Beer by Moonlight' in the drama — is kept as a photo set only. No one is serving. The teal frontage and the fake vine covering the building are maintained for photographs, there is a lit display case beside it holding Oyun's poster and the guitar used on screen, and it is lit at night. Do not turn up expecting a drink.
- One shop really is open
- Gongjin Banjeom, the Chinese-noodle place from the drama, is a working restaurant and busy with actual customers — the exception among the filming shopfronts.
- What to look for
- Bora Supermarket keeps the winning lottery poster from the drama and has a bench outside set up for photos; Cheongho Hardware is Geum-chul's shop; Gongjin Stationery & Toys is the children's shop. The squid tower in the middle of the market is the landmark, with benches around it.
- Time the market right
- Korean five-day markets are morning markets. A visitor who arrived at 11:00 on a market day found traders already winding down. Come early if you want the stalls; come any day if you only want the filming locations, which are there all the time.
- It is quieter than you expect
- Several 2026 reports say the same thing: the buzz of the broadcast years has faded and one visitor on a market day in August found it barely felt like one. The upside is that you can walk it slowly and photograph without queuing.
- Fans have left a wall
- There is a run of sticky notes left by visitors in several languages, a photo zone, and a screen playing scenes from the show.
Based on: Six Korean-language visitor reports published between June and August 2026, plus the Gyeongsangbuk-do provincial government's own location guide
Sources checked:
- Gyeongsangbuk-do provincial government blog — Cheongha Gongjin Market location guide (July 2026)Official
- Korean visitor report, August 2026 — shop-by-shop walkthroughVisitor report
- Korean visitor report, August 2026 — Oyun's café, Gongjin Banjeom, Bora SupermarketVisitor report
- Korean visitor report, July 2026 — current atmosphereVisitor report
Dramas filmed at Cheongha Gongjin Market
Why this market and not Jeju
Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha looks like Jeju and is not Jeju. Gongjin is stitched together from real places around Pohang on the southeast coast, and the market — the town’s living room, where half the cast’s arguments happen — is here in Cheongha, about forty minutes north of Pohang Station.
What makes it worth the detour is that the shopfronts were left up. Most drama sets are struck the week filming ends. Cheongha kept Bora Supermarket’s sign, kept the hardware store, kept the teal frontage of Oyun’s bar, and added a map at the entrance so visitors can find them. The town leaned in far enough to put “Gongjin” into the market’s own name.
What you’ll actually find
Be clear about what “kept” means. These are façades, not businesses. Oyun’s bar is maintained as a photo set — the vine on the building is artificial, the guitar in the case beside it is the one from the show, and nobody is pouring anything. The same goes for most of the marked spots.
The exception is Gongjin Banjeom, which is a genuine, busy restaurant. If you want to eat inside a location rather than photograph one, that’s the one.
Everything else is the market doing its ordinary job: a rural five-day market that has been running here for generations, selling vegetables, fish, grain and household goods to people who have never watched the drama.
Getting the timing right
Two different clocks run here and it’s easy to get caught out.
The filming locations are outdoors and permanent. Any day, any hour of daylight, they’re there.
The market only happens on dates ending in 1 and 6 — the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st and 26th of each month — and it is a morning market. Korean five-day markets open early and thin out by early afternoon; a visitor who turned up at 11:00 on a market day found stalls already packing. If the market is the point, be there in the morning.
Honest note on atmosphere
Korean visitors writing in 2026 are consistent about this: it is much quieter than it was. One arrived on a market day in August and said it barely felt like a market day at all. The crowds that came in the first years after broadcast have thinned.
Whether that’s a loss depends on what you came for. You will not queue for photographs, and you can take the whole market at walking pace. But if you were expecting the bustle you saw on screen, that particular thing is gone.
What’s nearby
Cheongha sits on Pohang’s northern coast, which is where the rest of Gongjin is. Wolpo Beach — the lost-shoe meeting and Du-sik’s surfing — is about fifteen minutes away, and the hilltop boat at Sabang Memorial Park rounds out the northern loop. Guryongpo Village, with the two clifftop houses and the red lighthouse, is on the southern side of Pohang and makes the other half of a full day.