Mask Girl: Netflix’s Dark Webtoon Thriller and Where It Was Filmed in Korea

Three actresses play one woman, and that is the gamble Mask Girl (Korean: 마스크걸, Maseukeugeol) builds its whole spine around. The 2023 Netflix original — a dark comedy crime thriller streaming worldwide on Netflix — was written and directed by Kim Yong-hoon from the wildly popular Naver webtoon by Mae-mi and Hee-se. Seven episodes track a single life through three radically different chapters, which is precisely why no single face could carry it. If you like your K-dramas pitch-black and genuinely hard to predict, start here.

What it’s about (no spoilers)

Kim Mo-mi (김모미) is an office worker eaten up by insecurity about her looks. By day she disappears into a beige corporate cubicle. By night she pulls on a mask, switches on a camera, and becomes an anonymous internet broadcast jockey adored by strangers who will never see her real face. That double life is only the ignition. A chain of unlucky, ill-fated events tips Mo-mi’s quiet existence into something dangerous and impossible to take back, and the story spirals well past its premise. Underneath the genre machinery it’s a slow-burn fable about beauty standards, loneliness, obsession, and the masks we all wear online and off. Fair warning: it’s dark, occasionally violent, and shot through with deadpan black comedy.

The cast: one woman, three faces

Kim Mo-mi is played by three performers as her life — and her face — change over the years. Newcomer Lee Han-byeol (이한별) opens the story as the masked office worker in her acting debut, a deliberate casting call by the director to keep the character grounded and unglamorous. Former After School singer turned actress Nana (나나 / 임진아) takes the baton for a later chapter as a transformed, steely Mo-mi, a turn that drew some of the strongest reviews of her career.

Veteran star Go Hyun-jung (고현정) closes out the final timeline as a hardened, world-weary Mo-mi known as Prisoner 1047. The supporting bench is where the show really bites. Ahn Jae-hong (안재홍) is unforgettable as Joo Oh-nam (주오남), a desperately lonely co-worker who fixates on Mask Girl’s broadcasts, and Yeom Hye-ran (염혜란) is fierce and heartbreaking as his mother, Kim Kyung-ja (김경자), a woman who has poured her whole identity into her son.

Why it matters

Mask Girl landed as one of Netflix’s most talked-about Korean titles of 2023. Critics singled out the three-actress structure, the tonal whiplash between horror, comedy and tragedy, and the sharp read on lookism and online identity. Ahn Jae-hong and Yeom Hye-ran in particular got the loudest praise for performances that slide from pitiful to terrifying. This is not a cozy romance — it’s a character study with teeth, the kind you binge in one sitting and then need a minute to shake off. If the revenge mechanics of The Glory or the social-media dread of Celebrity worked on you, it hits the same nerve.

Where it was filmed in Korea

The shoot stayed entirely inside South Korea, with principal photography running from February to September 2022, and two regions did most of the work. The first is Sejong (세종특별자치시), the country’s planned administrative capital. Its clean, modern, almost anonymous streetscapes and apartment blocks are an uncanny fit for a drama about urban isolation, and cast and crew were spotted filming key sequences across several Sejong neighborhoods. For travelers it’s an easy add-on to a Daejeon trip, with the sprawling Sejong Lake Park (세종호수공원) and the National Sejong Arboretum worth your time once you’re there.

The second anchor is Goesan County (괴산군) in North Chungcheong Province, a rural stretch of mountains, valleys and quiet villages that plays as the deliberate opposite of the city scenes. Goesan is real countryside, known nationally for its hot peppers and for spots like Hwayang-dong Valley (화양동 계곡) and Mount Gunja — a rewarding detour if you want to fold some actual Korean nature into your K-drama pilgrimage.

Korean food featured

Food isn’t the engine here. The show runs on character, atmosphere and dread, and it never lingers on a signature Korean dish the way a slice-of-life or romance drama would. There’s no standout culinary moment to chase, so treat this as a watch-for-the-story pick rather than mukbang fuel. If a Goesan trip leaves you hungry, the region’s chili-forward local cooking and fresh mountain vegetables are the thing to seek out on the ground.

Bottom line

Seven tight episodes on Netflix, three remarkable leads, and a webtoon premise that keeps reinventing itself: Mask Girl is fast, fearless and deeply unsettling. Go in knowing it’s dark, and let it surprise you.