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How Kian's Bizarre B&B Is Made: Kian84's Blueprints, a Floating Inn and a Winter Branch

대환장 기안장은 어떻게 만들어지나

Kian84 designs each guesthouse himself, and the producers build it as drawn: a climbing wall for a front door, poles between floors, and a slide out into the sea. This is how Netflix's Kian's Bizarre B&B went from a sketch to an inn on the sea off Ulleungdo and then to a winter branch in the Daegwallyeong mountains, and how both seasons did on Netflix.

Data as of

Kian84 in a life jacket splashing down a yellow slide into water, with a laughing woman on the left and Jin pulling a face on the right, under the Netflix logo and the words Official Trailer
Pictured: Kian84 coming down a slide into the water in a life jacket, with his Season 1 staff Ji Ye-eun and Jin, from the thumbnail of Netflix's official Season 1 trailer; the table lists what each branch of the B&B was built with.
The features of both branches of Kian's Bizarre B&B, as described by Netflix and the producers
Branch Feature How it works
Season 1 · UlleungdoLocationA main house built on a barge moored on the sea off the island of Ulleungdo.28
Season 1 · UlleungdoArrivalGuests are fetched by boat. Ji Ye-eun, the youngest staff member, got a boat licence for the job.34
Season 1 · UlleungdoFront doorThere isn't one: guests check in by climbing a 3.8 m rock wall.45
Season 1 · UlleungdoExitA slide that runs straight into the sea.46
Season 1 · UlleungdoBetween floorsThe two floors are linked only by poles, so the kitchen can be reached only by pole.48
Season 1 · UlleungdoBedsOpen-air beds hung on the outer wall, slept in wearing a safety belt, under the stars or in the rain. Kian84 said they were the part he worked on most.4610
Season 1 · UlleungdoExtrasA gym facing the waves, fishing straight off the house and a "water park" at sea.4
Season 1 · UlleungdoAnnexA house on a mountainside of the island, kept as a fallback in case of storms, with a barracks-style shared sleeping platform and a wood-fired stove.78
Season 2 · DaegwallyeongLocation"Branch No. 2", deep in the mountains of Daegwallyeong in midwinter. From outside it looks like an ordinary house blown up to giant size.1113
Season 2 · DaegwallyeongInsideProducer Kim Ji-hyun said it "looks ordinary" outside but has more surprises the further in you go.1315
Season 2 · DaegwallyeongGetting aroundSliding down a pole again.11
Season 2 · DaegwallyeongLaundryDone by hand in the snow, with no washing machine.11
Season 2 · DaegwallyeongExtrasA sauna, a skating rink and a karaoke room.1214
Season 2 · Not builtRejected designsA house that flies, a house that rolls along the ground and an insect house hung in a tree, turned down as impractical and facing legal hurdles.1315

Features as described in Netflix's announcements and at the producers' press events; the show doesn't publish floor plans, so each row is only what an opened source states.461113 Season 1 premiered on April 8, 2025 with nine episodes, three a week; Season 2 premiered on September 22, 2026 with ten, released over three weeks.612

Inside the production

"What if Kian84 ran Hyori's B&B?"

Kian's Bizarre B&B (대환장 기안장) is made by producer Jung Hyo-min (정효민) and writer Yoon Shin-hye (윤신혜), who made JTBC's Hyori's Bed and Breakfast in 2017. It's produced by Studio Modak, with Lee So-min (이소민) and Hwang Yun-seo (황윤서) co-producing Season 1.38 Jung said a guesthouse show always reveals its host's life and philosophy, and that after working with Lee Hyori he didn't think he could top it with anyone. The question he and Yoon kept coming back to was what Hyori's B&B would have been like with Kian84 (기안84) as host.36

Jung said he first planned it in the autumn of 2023. With other hosts the question was "what would it be like?", but with Kian84 it became "would it even work?". He also said watching Kian84 run marathons showed him a sense of responsibility.67 Kian84, a webtoon artist turned TV personality, had won the grand prize at the 2023 MBC Entertainment Awards. Applications for guests opened on June 5, 2024.1

Building Kian84's blueprint

Kian84 designed the house himself. He said guesthouse shows had always been comfortable, so he set out to make one as uncomfortable as possible, with romance in it. The design only came to him as his deadline closed in, and he said he hadn't expected Netflix to actually build it.10 Looking at the plans, the producers thought it would be "an adventure Kian brought on himself". The art director they hired had worked on tvN's Youn's Kitchen, and told them it was a house no professional would ever imagine.68

The rule, the producers said, was to build it "as imagined, but safely": keep the basic shape and the fun of each feature, and find a way to make it safe.4 Hwang Yun-seo said the crew set safety rules and ran it themselves before anyone else did, sleeping in it, riding the poles and cooking there.6 A typhoon warning came a week before filming. Jung said they planned for every branch of the decision tree, from whether they could reach Ulleungdo at all to whether the main house and then the annex could be used, which is why the mountainside annex existed.67

Casting the staff and the guests

Jung said the staff had to show sides of the show that Kian84 doesn't, with characters strong enough not to be swept along by him. Actress Ji Ye-eun (지예은) was Kian84's recommendation. BTS's Jin (진) was cast in secret from both of them, and the approach went in while he was still doing military service; Jung said only a tenth of his charm had been seen so far.67 Jin later said it was the first job he had chosen after his discharge, apart from advertising and other commitments, and that the staff weren't told the concept: they saw the boat and the mountain house and were asked to take guests from the first day.10

The guests were chosen for "youth", which the producers said they defined by each person's own idea and story of being young rather than by age.5 Jung said Netflix also paid for dubbing in each market's language, which he called unusual for a variety show.9

Season 2: a winter branch

For Season 2 the B&B moved deep into the snowy mountains of Daegwallyeong. Producer Lee So-min said that after a midsummer season on the sea the team wanted the opposite: a winter guesthouse where everyone gathers in a warm room at night to eat, play and get to know each other.1115 Kian84 said the design took about a year of talks with the producers. He threw out around ten ideas, again under deadline pressure.1315 Co-producer Kim Ji-hyun (김지현) said Kian84's standard from the start was that he would rather not do it at all than build something with less impact than Branch No. 1. A flying house, a rolling house and an insect house hung in a tree were all dropped as impractical or legally difficult.1315

The staff grew from three to four: former volleyball player Kim Yeon-koung (김연경), Lee Junho (이준호) of 2PM and Kazuha (카즈하) of LE SSERAFIM. The producers said the larger house and the shorter winter days, which bring guests back from their outings earlier, called for one more pair of hands.13 She also said that, with Jin unable to return, Kian84 still wanted a superstar on the staff, which led to Lee Junho, and that Kian84's mix of admiration and fear of Kim Yeon-koung made the team want her.1315 The shoot lasted nine nights and ten days.13

The scorecard

Season 1 spent two weeks in Netflix's global Top 10 for non-English TV, peaking at No. 6 in its first week (6.2 million hours, 2.0 million views). In South Korea it spent five weeks in the TV Top 10 in 2025, peaking at No. 2, and it also made the Top 10 in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.1617

Season 2 opened at No. 1 in South Korea and stayed there for its first two weeks, to the week ending October 4, 2026, then ranked No. 3 and No. 9 in the weeks ending October 11 and 18: four weeks in all, before it left the list in the week ending October 25. It also made the Top 10 in Singapore for three weeks (peak No. 3), in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan for two and in Indonesia for one, and Season 1 returned to the South Korean list alongside it.1718 Unlike Season 1, Season 2 never entered the global non-English list.1619 For Season 1's place among other Korean reality shows, see Korean Reality Shows in Netflix's Global Top 10.

Sources

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