10 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.
열무 (yeolmu) literally means 'young radish,' a small, tender vegetable. Korean parents often give their unborn baby a sweet, playful nickname called a 태명 (taemyeong), chosen for its cute sound or hopeful meaning rather than any connection to the child's real name. Calling the baby 열무 here is Yu-ri's private, loving way of talking to her daughter before she is born.
The names shown on plaques — 고 서봉연 (the late Seo Bong-yeon) — follow the Korean custom of displaying the deceased's full name at a 납골당 (napgoldang), a columbarium or charnel house where cremated remains are stored in individual niches. The word 고 (故) placed before a name is a formal honorific meaning 'the late,' used only after death.
Man-seok shouts '훠이, 훠이!' (hwoi, hwoi), a traditional exclamation used to shoo away animals, pests, or unwanted spirits — the Korean equivalent of waving something off with a 'shoo!' The phrase carries a folksy, rural flavour and played here for comic effect, treating the scary exorcist like a stray chicken.
승부 조작 (seungbu jojak) means deliberately fixing the outcome of a sports match, and real match-fixing scandals have rocked Korean football and basketball several times. Players caught up in these cases faced criminal charges, career-ending bans, and intense public shame. The drama uses this as the event that destroyed Gang-bin's reputation and, ultimately, his life.
Eun-suk describes a spot in the local park as her 단골 자리 (dangol jari) — her 'regular place,' a term usually used for a favourite restaurant or stall. Korean apartment complexes almost always have benches and small playgrounds in shared courtyards, making them natural gathering spots where grandparents quietly watch grandchildren play without drawing attention.
커밍아웃 (keoming-aut) is directly borrowed from 'coming out.' South Korea has no legal recognition of same-sex relationships and family acceptance remains difficult, especially for older generations. Gang-bin's account — that his parents fell silent and kept saying 'it can't be so' — reflects the common parental reaction of shock and denial rooted in social pressure and unfamiliarity rather than outright hostility.
유리 공예 (yuri gong-ye) means glass craft or glass art — making objects by blowing, fusing, or cutting glass. The word 유리 also happens to be the heroine's name, giving her hobby a poetic double meaning. Korean dramas often show a character's unfulfilled creative dream as shorthand for the life they gave up, and this detail reveals how completely Yu-ri sacrificed her own ambitions after becoming a mother.
Yu-ri is visibly pregnant in this scene and addresses her unborn child as 열무 again, the nickname she used in the opening diary entry. Returning to the same 태명 at this late moment in the episode ties the present directly back to the hopeful future she was imagining at the start, making the contrast between those two moments all the sharper.
Korean folk belief holds that very young children and babies are closer to the spirit world and more likely to sense or see 귀신 (gwishin, ghosts). This idea appears frequently in dramas and daily superstition: a baby staring at an empty corner or crying for no reason is sometimes said to be reacting to an unseen presence. The show uses this belief seriously — Seo-u's ability to see Yu-ri is framed as a real, ongoing burden rather than a gift.
Yu-ri's closing words echo the episode title '내 인생의 내일' (nae insaeng-ui naeil), meaning 'my life's tomorrow.' In Korean the word 내일 (naeil) sounds almost identical to 내 일 (my matter / my affair), adding a quiet pun: tomorrow was always her business, her purpose. Ending with this phrase ties together the diary monologue from the very beginning and gives the episode a circular, elegiac shape.