13 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.
Kim Shin uses the word 신탁 (sintак), meaning a message or prophecy delivered by a god. In Korean folk belief, goblin-like spirits (도깨비, dokkaebi) were thought to receive glimpses of fate that ordinary humans cannot see. His saying the oracle was correct confirms that what he witnessed was a genuine vision of the future, not a hallucination.
아이고 is a catch-all Korean exclamation used to express pain, surprise, relief, or exhaustion — similar to 'Oh my goodness' or 'Ugh' depending on context. Here Kim Shin collapses after an enormous supernatural effort, so the phrase lands somewhere between relief and worn-out complaint. It is one of the most common everyday expressions you will hear from people of all ages.
Deok-hwa refers to Cheonwoo Group's secretariat (비서실) and data team (전산실) as if they are a small army on standby. In South Korea, large family-owned conglomerates called 재벌 (jaebeol) maintain powerful in-house PR and legal teams specifically trained to suppress media crises — a privilege unavailable to ordinary companies. Deok-hwa casually weaponising this resource shows how absurdly wealthy and connected his family is.
The Grim Reaper erases bystanders' memories one by one on a street corner, which draws on the traditional Korean concept of 저승사자 (Jeoseung Saja) — the Death Messenger who escorts souls to the afterlife. In classical folk tales these figures have authority over the living at the moment of death. The drama extends that power here to include making the living forget supernatural events they should never have witnessed.
The Grim Reaper proposes that he wept at Kim Shin's portrait because of 스탕달 신드롬 — Stendhal Syndrome — a real psychological phenomenon where a person becomes overwhelmed, dizzy, or emotional when confronted with extraordinarily beautiful art. The term is widely known among educated Koreans and is often used half-jokingly as a sophisticated excuse for being moved to tears. His deadpan use of a Western medical term in this absurd situation is played for comedy.
In Korean mythology and Buddhist-influenced folk belief, a person becomes a 저승사자 (Death Messenger) as punishment for a grave sin committed in a past life. The show treats this as lore the Reapers themselves only half-understand, since their memories are wiped clean. The junior Reaper's anxious drinking and philosophising about what crime could have landed him in this job captures genuine cultural unease around karma (업보, eobbo) and cosmic justice.
The mother orders 천국 (Cheon-guk, Heaven) for her child — the tea house's whimsical name for a drink. The scene is quietly devastating because a 저승사자 is present, making 'heaven' carry its literal weight: she is unknowingly ordering her child's afterlife destination. Korean dramas frequently use this kind of wordplay to blur the line between the mundane and the supernatural without telegraphing it.
The Grim Reaper jokes that there are more fried-chicken restaurants (닭집, dakjip) in Korea than there are branches of a global burger chain worldwide. This is a real running joke in Korean culture — South Korea genuinely has an extraordinary density of chicken restaurants, estimated at over 80,000 nationwide, more per capita than nearly any country on earth. They are neighbourhood staples open late, often paired with beer (치맥, chimaek), and a go-to for delivery and comfort food.
Eun-tak tells her classmate she applied under the 사회 배려자 전형 (sahoe baeryeoja jeonhyeong), a university admissions category reserved for applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds — such as low-income households, single-parent families, or children raised without guardians. Korean university entrance is fiercely competitive, and these special tracks exist to give structurally disadvantaged students a path in. Eun-tak's casual mention of it is a quiet reminder of how precarious her upbringing has been.
Sunny reveals her legal name was chosen by a 점쟁이 (jeomsjaengi), a traditional fortune-teller or shaman, who insisted that exact name would bring her good fortune. Consulting a fortune-teller when naming a child is still common in South Korea, especially among older or more traditional families. The name itself — 김선 (Gim Seon) — sounds classical and faintly melancholy to modern Korean ears, which is exactly why she prefers the bright English nickname 'Sunny'.
Yoo the chairman describes the old man visiting a place each year around this time to offer 등 (deung), lanterns or lights. Lighting lanterns for the dead is a widespread Korean Buddhist practice — most famously during 연등회 (Yeondeunghoe) at Buddha's Birthday, but also performed privately as an act of memorial or penance. The ritual here signals that Kim Shin carries centuries of guilt toward specific souls and marks the date with devotional grief.
The names 김선 (Gim Seon) and 왕여 (Wang Yeo) appearing together on screen is the drama's first clear hint linking Sunny and the Grim Reaper to Goryeo-era identities. 왕여 is a name composed of 왕 (王, king/royal) and 여 (旅 or 餘), fitting for Goryeo royalty, as 왕 was the clan name of the Goryeo ruling house. The show has been carefully withholding these names until now, so their simultaneous reveal is a major narrative signal.
삼신 (Samshin), literally 'three spirits', is the Korean goddess who oversees conception, birth, and the fate woven into a child's life at the moment they are born. She is one of the most important figures in Korean shamanic belief, and pregnant women traditionally pray to her. The drama casts her as the one who 'assigned' Eun-tak's destiny at birth, which makes her confrontation with Kim Shin here a collision between the god of fate and the person fate has marked.