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If you’ve spent any time in aespa content — pictorials, behind-the-scenes clips, the occasional MV set piece — there’s a decent chance you’ve seen Seongsu-dong without realizing it. It’s become one of those Seoul neighborhoods that keeps showing up in aespa’s visual output, less because it’s a designated “aespa neighborhood” (it isn’t, officially) and more because it’s exactly the kind of place a stylish, concept-driven group’s content team keeps gravitating back to: converted warehouses, industrial-chic cafes, and a design-forward energy that photographs well in almost any light.

This isn’t an official aespa tour. There’s no plaque, no fan pilgrimage map handed out by SM. It’s just a neighborhood that keeps turning up in the group’s content often enough that fans have started noticing the pattern — and it happens to be a genuinely good one-day itinerary on its own merits, aespa connection or not.

Why Seongsu-dong specifically

Seongsu used to be Seoul’s shoe-manufacturing district, and a lot of that industrial architecture never got torn down — it got renovated instead. Old factories and warehouses became cafes, boutiques, and studio spaces without losing their raw concrete-and-steel bones. That’s a very specific visual texture: clean, a little cold, a little futuristic, which lines up neatly with aespa’s general aesthetic even outside any specific shoot location. It’s the kind of backdrop that doesn’t need much dressing up to look like it belongs in a concept photo.

It also helps that the neighborhood is dense with exactly the kind of small, design-conscious businesses that make for good wandering. You’re not walking between attractions on a map so much as drifting from one interesting storefront to the next, which is a very different rhythm from the more tourist-mapped parts of Seoul.

A rough one-day route

Morning is best spent just walking the main stretch near Seoul Forest — Seongsu doesn’t reward a tight schedule as much as it rewards wandering into whatever cafe or shop looks interesting from the street. The area around the old factory buildings is where you’ll find the highest concentration of the converted-warehouse aesthetic, and it’s worth building in extra time here since almost every block has at least one spot worth stopping in.

Seoul Forest itself, right at the edge of the neighborhood, is a solid midday reset — genuinely one of Seoul’s better green spaces, and a good contrast to the concrete-and-steel energy of the shopping streets. After that, the afternoon and evening are for doubling back through Seongsu’s cafe scene, which is dense enough that you could spend an entire day there and still not run out of new spots.

What to bring

You don’t need much for a day like this beyond comfortable shoes — Seongsu is very much a walking neighborhood, and the appeal is in wandering rather than efficiently checking off stops. If you want a starting point for planning the trip itself, we’ve linked a Seongsu-dong travel guide search below in the picks section.

One caveat

None of this is confirmed as a literal, official aespa filming location list — it’s a pattern fans have noticed across multiple pieces of content over time, not a statement from the group or SM about where specific shoots happened. Treat it as “a neighborhood that fits the aesthetic and keeps showing up,” not a verified stop-by-stop shoot map.

Either way, it’s a genuinely good day out in Seoul, with or without the aespa connection — worth doing on its own terms, whether or not you spot a single familiar backdrop along the way.