The drama with a strong, symbolic place and presence to show class distinctions was PARASITE. The squalid semi-basement flat was common in poor sections of Korea. Director Bong Joon-ho wanted to show the drastic contrast between the two families.

When the Weather is Fine > The ML's house is his house but a library and the place for the book club. It's in the countryside and looks cozy in the Winter.

The King's Affection> The secret pavillon! The ML gave it a new life in memory of his first love. It's an important place for the main characters since they're kid.

A Piece of Your Mind> I really liked the different places they chose for this drama, they suited so well the story. The recording studio was an original place for a story but I liked how the characters started to know each other by sharing this place.

Parasite is a great example.

I can’t seem to remember any kdrama right now. But the drama that crossed my mind right away is the recent Chinese drama ‘Meet Yourself’. The drama was about the beautiful village and it played such an important part in the story telling. It’s almost like I lived in that village for a few weeks while watching the drama.

Also, recent ‘Call it love’. I really liked Jun’s house and how it brought together yet gave space to him and the siblings. The maknae’s makeshift room with a view to the living area was such great visual story telling. So did Dong-Jin’s office. They all felt like they were part of the story and made a strong impression for me.

Moon-Young's house in "It's Okay to Not Be Okay"

The town of Ongsan in "When the Camellia Blooms"

The village of Gongjin in "Hometown Cha Cha Cha"

I loved the neighborhood (Samsung Rural Village) in Meow: Secret Boy.

Quebec in Goblin
The north Korean village in CLOY

I love the apartment in Fight for My Way. I even remember the name given to their apartment building, Nam-il. Kwak Si Yang's character name. I love that drama aside from KSY there were memorable cameos from Kwak Dong Yeon and Choi Woo Shik.

I love almost all the filming location in Our Beloved Summer. Ung's house, Yeon Soo's house, the old buildings around them that Ung drew and of course their school. The facade of their HS was used in a lot of dramas like True Beauty.

Reply 1988 location and the characters' homes were also memorable.

-The Hanok (Songojae) house in Personal Taste
-The piano studio & hair salon in Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol
-The hospital (Yulje) in Hospital Playlist
-The Coffee shop (Princes Cafe) in Coffee Prince
-The metalwork shop (Where the Rising Star Stays) in Flower of Evil
-The jail in Prison Playlist
-The North Korean village in Crash Landing on You

To answer this prompt, 3 dramas crossed my mind.

1. Gongjin village in Hometown Cha Cha Cha: The story takes place mostly in that village, and it succeeded in taking me in. This one is a good example of a set becoming one of the main characters. Hometown Cha Cha Cha is nothing without Gongjin village, its seaside, wind blowing, its townspeople, its ocean breeze.

2. Quebec in Goblin. Even though the leads are supposed to travel there from time to time, I feel like Goblin is Quebec and vice versa. There is something ethereal about the place and how it was shot in this show. Maybe the reason I remember it vividly is because some very special scenes took place there.

3. SML's house in Coffee Prince. Coffee Prince is one of the ultimate classics of Kdramas. It's funny how the SML's place is one of the images from Kdramas that has stuck in my head for who know how long. There is something classic about the FL riding a bicycle to deliver milk at the SML's house and befriending his dog there and the location and interior design of that house. It's so classic. It's so timeless (the way the show also is).

I'll give the obvious answer: rooftops.
Fight For My Way, You Are My Spring, Just Between Lovers, High Society, every single school drama, Happiness, etc., have these special rooftop scenes?

Rooftops are magic, they can be or mean anything. In Happiness and HS it was all about a new beginning or freedom, in school or workplace dramas it's a safe place (scape) —or maybe the most dangerous place (bullying, suicides)—. In other shows it becomes EVERYTHING. When we have the cohabitation/neighbors trope in these rooftop houses, all the big moments happen there. If you don't believe me, watch You Are My Spring or Jugglers. 😉

2. Shows with a central squad also have their special place, but sometimes it doesn't have relevance. I will always remember the detective agency (well, the whole neighborhood) in Zombie Detective, but I can't say the same about other shows.
Same with medical or legal dramas. Sometimes you're watching a medical drama, but you forget your watching a medical drama (Yong Pal, Blood), other times you feel like you're in that hospital (D-Day, Dr Kim).

3. To answer the question "are there any drama settings that you loved like a second lead?". Yes, there are.
The buildings from Happiness and Sweet Home. Every corner of those buildings were important for the development of the stories. Loved them.

The building in Vincenzo was a character for me, everything revolved around it, drove the action and created the relationships.

Fictional Sanpo village in My Liberation Notes was as much a character as the characters - the family house with its overdecorated interior and stacks of unlovely but useful equipment outside, the gravel road to the bus stop that the characters trudged up and down so often, even the open farm fields that sometimes felt more confining than liberating. The characters constantly fought against it as if it were a heavy weight pressing them down.

Manyang Township in Beyond Evil, although imaginary, also seemed like a real place with its mix of rundown houses and streets, dull, cheap public architecture, and eerie reed fields. Every detail looked so ordinary and yet it felt very closed-in and oppressive, like something evil was lurking behind every wall or waiting to spring out of the undergrowth.

In a very different mood, the beautiful library in Extraordinary You, alternately light-filled and mysteriously dark, seemed like a place where anything that existed in all those books could suddenly materialize in the stacks.

I have a thing for islands and coastal areas, so I liked the island village in Thank You, and I've always wanted to visit Jeju Island which has featured in a lot of kdramas.

I also like libraries and bookstores, so for example that huge library in Queen In-hyun's Man was pretty cool.

The house in Uncontrollably fond, The webtoon shop in True Beauty, The Market and family home in Once Again, Twenty five, Twenty one; the tunnel they run through, the front of the female lead’s house, the male leads living space. The guest house in Twelve nights. The coffee shop in Would you like a cup of coffee. The tailor shop in the gentlemen of Wolgyesu tailor shop.

Right, I’m gonna have to write this fast because I don’t have the freedom to expose about this all morning, as it is the Queen Mother’s birthday and I have to go make Lasagne from scratch.

Just as a note, you obviously mean PLACE specifically here, but settings can actually be PLACE and TIME. Anyway:

WHITE CHRISTMAS.
Everything about White Christmas' setting.
The title - it's set during a White Christmas.
The location - an elite private school in the mountains.
The time - abandoned over Christmas break but for 8 students and a teacher, for 8 days.
The mountains, the winter and the school themselves all take on their own roles in this story, contributing and supporting the narrative in such a way, that you can’t take this show out of the Setting.

In fact, the Setting in White Christmas is really a secondary villain of the story. Or even sometimes a primary one. And it is constantly working in tandem with the core mystery and thriller, in this kind of push and pull. There is tension from everything else, but the tension from the setting is almost overwhelming, and intentionally traps you inside it. This is elevated of course, by the slow and intense cinematography and directing, that frames this school bound in midwinter white in eerie industrial shots that establish the horror and thriller tone throughout.

In this way, White Christmas embodies the phrase of “sets the scene” more than many other dramas I can think of. The story IS the setting. The school and its secrets, the way it closes in around the students, the way it is isolated from everything, physically, from the outside world, and metaphorically, from truth and what is right and good and not an endless nightmare. The mountains themselves trapping the school even farther, locking in the cage itself. And Winter being this cold and oppressive threat and genuine point of conflict that both exacerbates the circumstances of the main characters, but also supports the human villain like a dreadful prosopopoeic igor.

And then within the wider setting, there are smaller settings, the student’s rooms, the dining hall, the performance hall, the infirmary, the detention room, all doors and windows and stairs, and of course, maybe my favourite, the clocktower. Standing stark and black in a field of snow, looming ominously like a potence of doom, a wicked sundial.

If this sounds like a super vague explanation of events and the settings therein, it’s because one can’t talk too much about White Christmas without entering spo-iler territory, and you don’t want spoilers going in if you can help it.
So yes, White Christmas, and everything about it.

Answer Me 1988:
The little street where they all lived. The beginning where the mothers shout to their children it’s dinner time and asking them to deliver food to the other families was iconic. And the ending, where the once lively street filled with memories of their youth was deserted made me cry buckets

The house in Secret Garden that then reappears in What’s wrong with Secretary Kim!
It’s especially iconic for me in Secret Garden, as much of the drama is spent there. I thought the house was as attractive as Hyun Bin, and they use the house’s unique features really well.

The first show that ever made me feel this way was Que Sera Sera. That elevator, those long corridors, the apartment doors, they were all alive and vibrating. Each one of them felt like an important secondary character. To this day, whenever I see any similar shot in a show I immediately snap back to Que Sera Sera.

Honourable mentions:

The male lead's house in Nine, and the grandfather's house in Deserving of the Name both perfectly conveyed that feeling of old and new at the same time, both felt like a character that connected the past and the present together.

Every set in The Devil Judge. Every room, every office, felt like a character with a rich history.

The very first drama that has such a strong sense of place is Winter Sonata with Nami Island. Now, anytime I see snow, I would always wistfully remember of Nami Island.

Other one would be Sorry, I Love You with Hosiers Lane in Melbourne, my hometown. Anytime I walk past that little lane to my fav restaurant or just passing by Fed Square facing that lane, it would remind me off So Ji-Sub mane and Im Soo-Jong rainbow knit dress.

I love it when a drama is set in a seaside town or the countryside, like Homcha. Or in a quaint little neighborhoods like the one in Our Beloved Summer. Actually, any hanok-related set is a win for me.

The office and rooftop of MISAENG.

The street where they all lived in REPLY 1988.

The piano studio/cafe in A PIECE OF YOUR MIND.

The glass house in SECRET GARDEN (Maiim Vision Village).

Deok-mi's apartment building in FLOWER BOY NEXT DOOR.

The ridiculously expensive and stunning chaebol house in CINDERELLA & 4 KNIGHTS (Southcape Club House). Also in ARE YOU HUMAN TOO?

Honorable mention: Cliff of Non-Doom in any drama.
Its most breathtaking cameo for me was in BOSSAM: STEAL THE FATE.

Yoo Ji Ho's apartment block in One Spring Night. I loved how the camera followed the characters as the ran up and down the stairs.

What strikes me is the number of dramas that featured Jeju Island. Not a Korean myself, I think Jeju Island is a major attraction for locals as well as tourists, especially the women who make a living as divers. It can either be the setting for the entire drama or included as a location in an episode.

I just thought of N Seoul Tower which is featured in so many romance dramas with the love locks however the only one I can think of now though is True Beauty when she goes there in the hope of meeting her true love.

The Tunnel in Twenty Five Twenty One

Everything happens in that tunnel. The happiest times where the whole crew is running down without a care in the world, the saddest times where there is graffiti on Ko Yu Rim being a traitor, the nostaligic times when Na Hee Do returns as an adult. That tunnel is everything.

Descendants of the Sun. The whole fictional country: the base, the town, but especially the beach with the ship run aground.

Though there are some drama that are strongly set in a house or a street, I was and am still very surprised by the lack of landscape or skyline view in kdramas.
It's quite rare to have a bird view of Seoul and having the habit to see the skyline of the city in CSI (as a signal that the advertisements pause is over ?) it almost disturbing. In some cdramas there is this city view that situate the story in Shanghai or showcase the modern skycrapers.

I am a bit disappointed to not be able to see more of Korea in the dramas.
Almost no landscape, hardly never a skyline, very rarely the Lotte tower (would it be considered ppl ?) sometime a view of the palace wall.
I did not count the starfield library apparitions in dramas, but I came to believe that this is one of the touristic place in Seoul.
The Namsam tower is visible in 15 dramas out of 198 in our watched list. And Jeju island 19 times, with more interior of coffee places than lava rocks.

For me, kdramas are all about the characters and not the places.
And definitely not a tourist selling point. They are so at lost with the "touristic pictures" that they only put 20sec of Istanbul iconic monuments in Reborn rich, I had to rewind to see and recognize the Blue mosque and Hagia Sophia. And in K2, they managed to film in Barcelona without showing any of the iconic buildings (and there's plenty) ! Only the iconic paving gives the city location (if you are familiar with it).
So many wasted opportunities.
And a reason why I was pleasantly surprised by the cityscape view of Cotaya in Taxi 2 (but for this location I do not know if there are other emblematic views).

Its fun to recognize the same location showing up in different series. I've lost count of how many different dramas I've see use that same cafe from 'Marriage Not Dating'. Wasn't that also the same cafe from 'You're The best Lee Soon-shin'? Also, more recently, there's that one big door built into that one big curving wall that always gets used in dramas as the entrance to a Chaebol mansion.

Nooo. I don’t check in for a few days and end up missing so much 🥲. Anyway, I’m here now, even though I am late. Here are mine:

Belle Epoque in Age of Youth
Sanpo in My Liberation Notes
The Assembly building in Into the Ring

The inn in "Chuno"

Hmm... Fight for my Way's setting was beautiful. I loved it.

I also loved Hometown Cha Cha Cha's set. It was idyllic and beautiful.

Shopping King Louie's set was also fantastic. It was realistic and beautiful and really fit the idea of the drama.

Another drama I loved funnily enough for its setting is Love to Hate You. All its settings are so cozy for some reason.

Warm and Cozy in... Warm and Cozy.

I agree with the setting in Fight My Way, so much happened on those stairs and rooftop. Also the Coffee shop and apartment with it's large rooftop deck in Coffee Prince, Quebec plus Goblin's home, and the friendly but dangerous NK village versus her safe and fancy but lonely apartment in CLOY.

Others that came to mind were France in The Package; all of those steps in My Mister highlighting her daily struggle to survive; the stepping stone stream crossing in Matrimonial Chaos; the university music rooms in Do You Like Brahms; the unusual warehouse type apartment with piano and rooftop in Secret Love Affair; the apartment with the library, tree, and life reflecting plants in My Love from the Star; and the revolving door entrance in Extraordinary Attorney Woo as a physical representation of her growth in confidence and competence in her new career.