Squid Game Season 2 Filming Locations

Squid Game Season 2 was filmed almost entirely in South Korea, split between a large studio complex in Daejeon and a series of street-level locations in and around Seoul. The game challenge environments were constructed as physical sets inside Studio Cube, the state-run production facility at 480 Daedeok-daero in Daejeon’s Yuseong District. Location work brought cameras to Seoul metro stations, Tapgol Park in the Jongno district, Seogang Bridge over the Han River, and Seoul Land amusement park in Gwacheon. Incheon contributed two locations: Terminal 1 of Incheon International Airport for the season-opening scene, and Seongapdo Island for exterior shots of the fictional competition island. Principal photography ran from July 2023 to June 2024, covering both Season 2 and Season 3 in a single back-to-back production run.

Studio Cube, Daejeon: The Main Production Base

Studio Cube in Daejeon’s Expo Science Park is where every game challenge environment for Season 2 was constructed from scratch. The facility is operated by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) under South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and is the largest publicly funded production complex in the country. The Squid Game production occupied Studio A, the largest of the facility’s sound stages at 1,500 pyeong (roughly 5,000 square meters).

Before Season 2 went into production, the entire Season 1 set was torn down. Production designer Chae Kyoung-sun, who won an Emmy for Outstanding Production Design for the first season, confirmed that “everything had been broken down” before construction on new sets began. The dormitory was rebuilt to the original blueprint but expanded to accommodate the O-X voting mechanic, with a floor-level division marked by a large O on one side and X on the other, and overhead colored lights. “There’s so much division in life,” Chae has said of the OX design. “I maximized that visually.”

The Mingle game set, a carousel-themed environment, required the installation of 2,000 light bulbs and went through extended color and safety testing. Chae has described the broader design approach as one of deliberate contrast: “We wanted to focus on beauty, nostalgia, and pureness as contrast to what was actually going on.” The purple-painted spiral staircase that connects the game levels was constructed as a physical set at Studio Cube and extended downward using CGI; Chae chose purple to evoke “a regal, godlike nature.” The production also built separate living and storage spaces for the pink guards in Season 2, showing a guard hierarchy that was absent from the sets in Season 1.

On Location in Seoul

The season’s opening episodes moved production from Studio Cube to multiple neighborhoods across Seoul.

Seong Gi-hun’s months-long mission to locate The Recruiter (Gong Yoo) was filmed at a series of real Seoul Metro stations. Jonggak Station on Line 1 and Oksu Station on Line 3 appear most prominently; Dobongsan Station also features in the search sequence. The pursuit ends at Jonggak Station, where Gi-hun’s team spots The Recruiter on the opposite platform.

Following The Recruiter out of the subway leads to Tapgol Park, a public green space in the Jongno district associated with Korea’s March 1 Independence Movement of 1919. The show staged the scene there in which The Recruiter offers homeless residents a choice between bread and a lottery scratcher, then destroys the bread.

The car chase in Episode 2, in which Gi-hun rides in the Front Man’s (Lee Byung-hun, playing Hwang In-ho) limousine while Detective Hwang Jun-ho (Wi Ha-joon) follows in pursuit, was filmed on Seogang Bridge spanning the Han River between Seoul’s Mapo and Yeongdeungpo districts.

Seoul Land, the amusement park at 181 Gwangmyeong-ro in Gwacheon just south of Seoul, appears in the early episodes as the pre-game workplace of Guard 011 and Player 246.

Incheon: Terminal 1 and the Competition Island

Terminal 1 of Incheon International Airport opens Season 2, with Seong Gi-hun walking away from a departure gate for a Los Angeles-bound flight, turning back toward Seoul to continue his mission. The airport had attracted attention from the public at the start of production: on July 10, 2023, a crew member blocked a public escalator during filming and, rather than offering a redirect, commanded bystanders to “Go back” in a manner that multiple witnesses described as rude and high-handed. A complaint posted online the following day circulated widely. The production company issued a formal apology on July 11, 2023, acknowledging that citizens had been made uncomfortable and pledging greater care during future shoots.

Seongapdo, a privately owned island in Ongjin County (part of Incheon Metropolitan City), doubles as the fictional competition island for exterior shots. The crescent-shaped island sits in the Yellow Sea and is reachable from the Incheon mainland by a ferry journey of roughly two hours. It is not open to tourists. Interior competition scenes were not filmed on Seongapdo; those were built and shot at Studio Cube in Daejeon.

Production Timeline

Principal photography for both Season 2 and Season 3 began in July 2023, following a reported script read-through in late June. Korean outlet OSEN reported that the cast and crew held a two-day wrap party in Gapyeong on June 11 and 12, 2024, placing the completion of filming in June 2024, approximately 11 months after the shoot began. Simultaneous production had been reported by OSEN and initially denied by Netflix; after the wrap, the back-to-back shoot was widely confirmed, and Netflix formally announced Season 3 in August 2024.

Season 2 premiered on Netflix on December 26, 2024. Season 3, the final installment of the series, was released June 27, 2025.

The physical rebuilding of the sets between seasons is not just a production detail. Chae Kyoung-sun’s team returned to the same structural blueprint for the dormitory but altered its dimensions to fit a new story mechanism: the floor that players literally stand on changed to reflect who they vote to eliminate. The room looks the same to a returning viewer, but it is not the same room. That gap between the screen’s apparent continuity and what the production actually built is part of what the show’s location choices consistently create, whether in a Daejeon sound stage or Tapgol Park in Jongno.