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.
사흘 means exactly three days. Korean has a set of native words for short spans: 하루 (one day), 이틀 (two), 사흘 (three), 나흘 (four), and so on up to 열흘 (ten). Young Jin-cheol is giving a firm, three-day deadline — not a vague 'a few days.'
The taxi driver is talking up his 'Prince' (프린스), a Kia model sold in South Korea in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In that era it was considered a smooth, reliable ride. Seeing one on the road now would be like spotting a perfectly preserved classic car — it immediately signals we are watching a scene set in 1992.
Young Jeong-u has written what he calls a 'last letter' to the woman he loves, addressed in the formal 씨 honorific (유진 씨). In Korean melodrama and real life alike, a letter beginning with someone's name plus 씨 and ending with '마지막' (last/final) carries unmistakable weight — it signals a goodbye that the writer does not expect to walk back from.
The 독서실 (dok-seo-sil) is a pay-by-the-hour silent study hall, a staple of Korean student life. The owner's surprise that anyone shows up on Christmas Eve highlights the intense exam culture: even a holiday is a potential study session for serious students, though most have snuck off to celebrate.
Leaving a note to be read years in the future — 20년 후에 보자 ('see you in twenty years') — plays on a sentimental Korean school tradition of writing time-capsule letters to one's future self or friends. Schools and youth groups often bury or seal them to be opened at class reunions. Sun-woo is borrowing that familiar form to plant something far stranger.
향 simply means an incense stick or cone — the kind burned at Buddhist temples, ancestral rites (제사), and funerals all across Korea. The drama uses this ordinary, culturally loaded object as its time machine, giving each trip a built-in ticking clock: the stick burns down and the window closes.
일타이피 (一打二皮) is a Korean idiom literally meaning 'one strike, two skins' — equivalent to 'kill two birds with one stone.' Sun-woo is quietly pleased with himself: one trip back could both save his brother and gather evidence against Choi Jin-cheol at the same time.
연상 (年上) means an older partner; here, four years older. In early-1990s Korea, a son dating a woman who was older, already a widow, had a child, and came from an entertainment background would face fierce opposition from a conservative family. The drama stacks every social disadvantage to show why Jeong-u's father forced the break-up.
The 1992 Hollywood film 'The Bodyguard,' starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, was a massive hit in South Korea. Its soundtrack — especially Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You' — dominated Korean radio and cassette sales for months. A scene set on Christmas Eve 1992 with two tickets to '보디가드' instantly evokes the pop-culture mood of that exact moment.
서울극장 (Seoul Theater) was one of the most famous single-screen cinemas in central Seoul, located near Jongno. Opened in 1979, it was a landmark date spot for decades before closing in 2013. Name-dropping it pinpoints both the era and the neighbourhood — Jongno in the early 1990s was the heart of Seoul's entertainment district.
성북동 (Seongbuk-dong) is a hillside neighbourhood in northern Seoul long associated with old-money families, diplomats, and artists. Telling a taxi driver to head there signals that Myeong-hui's family is comfortably well-off. Sun-woo already knows this address, which is a small but telling sign that he knows exactly who she is.
Consulting a 점쟁이 (fortune-teller or shaman) about a child's name and then officially changing it is far from unusual in Korea. Names carry 사주 (四柱) energy, and an inauspicious combination of characters is believed to bring bad luck. The legal name-change process exists partly because such consultations are so common — Min-yeong's mother changed her daughter's name, then her surname changed again at remarriage, giving her two entirely different identities.
Korean surnames come first, so 윤시아 is family name 윤 (Yoon) + given name 시아, while 주민영 is family name 주 (Joo) + given name 민영. The same person carried both names because her mother remarried (surname changed from 윤 to 주) and renamed her on a fortune-teller's advice. Sun-woo had been researching a Yoon Si-a — and has been dating her all along without either of them knowing.