9 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.
A 빈소 (binso) is the formal mourning room set up immediately after a death, usually in a hospital funeral hall, where family receives condolences around the clock. For a Catholic family the coffin is then moved to the 성당 (church) for a funeral Mass before the procession to the burial ground (장지). This three-stage flow — binso, Mass, burial — is the standard Catholic funeral sequence in Korea.
사표 (sapyo) is a formal written letter of resignation. In Korean workplace culture, submitting one is a weighty act — it can signal a break in loyalty rather than just a job change. The director noting that both characters resigned before this tragedy hit adds a layer of social precariousness: they now face bereavement without the institutional support a workplace provides.
The charges describe illegal egg harvesting from female researchers and paid transactions with undocumented foreign women. This mirrors the real 2005–2006 Hwang Woo-suk scandal, which shocked Korea and the world: a celebrated scientist fabricated stem-cell research results and was found to have obtained eggs from subordinates under coercive conditions. Korean viewers would feel the echo immediately.
Young-hoon tells Sun-woo that the life he saved chose to end itself — phrasing it as 'cut off his own life.' This is a direct reference to Jung-woo's suicide. In Korean the expression 스스로 목숨을 끊다 (to sever one's own life) is a formal, sorrowful way to name the act, used in news and eulogy contexts rather than casual speech.
법정 구속 means the judge orders the defendant taken into custody the moment sentence is handed down, with no grace period to settle affairs. It is relatively rare in high-profile Korean trials and signals the court sees a serious flight or destruction-of-evidence risk. The gasp in the courtroom reflects how publicly humiliating and unexpected this is for someone of Choi Jin-cheol's status.
Sun-woo pinpoints the date from his own old diary (일기장). Keeping a detailed personal diary is common among Korean students, and the drama has used diary entries throughout as reliable memory anchors. The fact that teenage Sun-woo recorded his brother's wedding day and his own errand in it is entirely plausible — and now that entry is the only clue to where the incense stick went.
종로 경찰서 is the Jongno Police Station, covering Seoul's historic central district. A document bearing its official 직인 (stamp/seal) would be a formal police record from the 1990s. Korean police stamps on archived evidence carry legal weight, so retrieving a 1993 stamped document suggests Jin-cheol is hunting for something that could rewrite the official record of a past crime.
Korean high school runs three years (고1, 고2, 고3), with 3학년 being the final, most pressured year — the year students sit the 수능 university entrance exam. Identifying someone as '명진 고등학교 3학년' is a very precise tag: it pins down not just school but life-stage. Choi's hitman using it shows he has done careful homework on his teenage target.
상중 is the formal mourning period following a family death, traditionally three days but observed variably today. During 상중, the bereaved are expected to stay near the 빈소 and receive visitors; leaving for personal business is seen as a lapse in filial duty. Sun-woo slipping away from the binso — and ending up stabbed — shows how completely his drive to confront Jin-cheol overrode that social obligation.