12 timestamped notes explaining the Korean cultural context in this episode — customs, idioms, food, honorifics, and history, at the moment each appears on screen. These notes discuss events across the whole episode. To see them revealed scene-by-scene as you watch, use the episode page to find an airing.
업순 (Eopsun) tells Hyeryeong to press ginseng against her irritated eye. Using 삼 (sam), the Korean word for ginseng, as a home remedy reflects a deep-rooted folk medicine tradition — ginseng has been used in Korean households for centuries to treat everything from fatigue to inflammation. It's the kind of remedy a village 할머니 (grandmother) might swear by over any doctor.
Eopsun draws a sharp line between herself and physicians: doctors just study hard from books, while a 무당 (mudang — shaman) must be born with innate spiritual power. This belief in 신기 (shin-gi), a god-given ability to communicate with spirits, is central to Korean shamanism. Someone who becomes a mudang through a calling is seen as fundamentally different from a trained professional.
The elderly neighbours settle onto an 온열 의자 (on-yeol uija — heated bench), which are heated outdoor seats installed at bus stops and parks across South Korea, especially in colder regions. They were introduced as a public welfare measure for elderly citizens and people waiting outside in winter. Spotting one is a small, warm slice of everyday Korean life.
Dongjae says his cousin from Baekeunn Middle School knew of the 'crazy mudang's daughter who ate her husband.' In Korean communities, a shaman's family can carry heavy social stigma — neighbours whisper that a mudang's rituals may have spiritually 'consumed' a husband who died young. The rumour follows Siwon like a shadow even into a new school.
Eopsun names the small figure 덜미 (deolmi), literally 'the scruff of the neck.' In Korean shamanistic practice, a 덜미 is a cloth effigy used to seize and control a person's spirit — the same way you'd grab something by the scruff. Ritual dolls like this appear in gut (굿) ceremonies and are considered powerful tools that demand great care and proper intent to use safely.
Eopsun describes carving eyes, nose, and mouth into the doll's face, wrapping it with silk thread mixed with nail clippings or hair, writing the target's 사주 (saju — birth date and hour), then dousing it with blood. This is a form of 저주 (jeoju — curse ritual) rooted in sympathetic magic: the belief that a physical link to a person — their hair, nails, or body fluid — gives power over their spirit. The ritual crosses from folk healing into the darker edges of mudang practice.
Eopsun offers Hyeryeong the role of 신딸 (shin-dal), meaning 'spirit daughter' or 'divine daughter.' This is not adoption — it is a formal spiritual apprenticeship in which a senior mudang takes a younger person under her wing and passes on her guardian spirits and knowledge. The shin-dal is believed to share in her teacher's spiritual power and responsibilities.
In her desperate prayer, Eopsun calls on 황사제불 불사제석 (Hwangsa Jebul Bulsa Jeseok), invoking a layered pantheon that blends Buddhist and indigenous Korean shamanistic deities. 제석 (Jeseok) is one of the most important gods in Korean shamanism, associated with longevity, family blessings, and fate. Mudang prayers often weave these names together in rapid, rhythmic chanting to reach multiple divine powers at once.
The student reads aloud 가는 길 (Going Away), a famous lyric poem by Kim Sowol (김소월, 1902–1934), Korea's most beloved modern poet. The poem describes the ache of leaving someone you love without being able to say so. Kim Sowol is so canonical that Korean students encounter him repeatedly in school, and hearing his lines here echoes the episode's own themes of things left unsaid between Siwon and Hyeryeong.
When a student shouts that the video has been posted to the 단톡방 (dan-tok-bang — KakaoTalk group chat), everyone's phones light up at once. KakaoTalk is the dominant messaging app in South Korea, and class group chats are nearly universal among students. A humiliating clip spreading through a school 단톡방 is one of the most feared forms of social exposure among Korean teenagers.
Eopsun quotes 심위법본 심존심사 (sim-wi beop-bon sim-jon sim-sa), a line from the Dhammapada that translates roughly as 'the mind is the foundation of all things; the mind is the master.' It is one of the most quoted Buddhist teachings in Korean culture and appears in sermons, proverbs, and literature. A mudang citing scripture this way shows how Korean shamanism has absorbed Buddhist language over centuries of coexistence.
Hyeryeong now uses the ritual Eopsun described — writing someone's 사주 (saju), their four pillars of destiny based on birth year, month, day, and hour — as the targeting mechanism for a curse. In Korean fortune-telling, saju is essentially a person's cosmic fingerprint, believed to encode their entire fate. Weaponising it in a ritual is about as intimate an attack as you can make in this belief system.