11 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.
High-end fashion boutiques in Korea, especially those catering to wealthy clients (사모님, 'madams'), often schedule private fitting appointments. Showing up on an unscheduled day — as Do-young does here — is a deliberate power move that signals he knows the shop's intimate routines.
Korean students are identified by grade, year-group, and class number — here '세명중학교 1학년 3반' means 'Semyeong Middle School, 1st grade, Class 3.' Yeon-jin reciting a child's exact class this way is a chilling threat: she has done her homework on Hyeon-nam's daughter down to the classroom door.
In Korea, teachers at state-run public schools hold 공무원 (gongmuwon) status — full civil-servant job security, a government pension, and near-impossible-to-lose employment. Mi-hee's excitement makes sense: a 공무원 position is considered the ultimate stable career. Dong-eun is actually at a private school (사립), so she misses that protection — a detail the show uses carefully.
Yeon-jin refers to a previous time when Mi-hee was paid — with a 수표 (supyo, a bank cheque) — to sign Dong-eun's 자퇴서 (jatoe-seo, voluntary withdrawal form). In Korea a minor cannot withdraw from school without a parent or guardian's signature, so a neglectful or corrupt parent can be bribed into giving up their child's education.
'원 플러스 원 행사' (one-plus-one event) is the Korean equivalent of a buy-one-get-one-free deal, borrowed directly from English. The phrase is plastered on everything from convenience-store snacks to, as Hye-jeong jokes here, cosmetic procedures. She's being flippant to ease the tension — and the clinic director plays along.
존나 (jonna) is a very common but coarse intensifier in Korean — roughly equivalent to 'fucking' used as an adverb ('fucking small,' 'fucking close'). It started as vulgar slang but is now widespread in casual speech among younger Koreans, often stripped of its original crude meaning. Hye-jeong throws it out casually here, which tells you a lot about how comfortable and blunt she is with Yeon-jin.
하우스 (hauseu) in this underworld context means an illegal gambling house — a private room where high-stakes card games or other gambling run outside police licensing. 'Raiding a hause' is the kind of operation a corrupt police team might do either to shake down operators for cash or to make a show of enforcement. The detective's superior is furious because the raid exposed their own dirty money trail.
잔치국수 (janchi guksu) literally means 'party noodles' — a simple, comforting soup of thin wheat noodles in a mild anchovy-and-kelp broth, traditionally served at weddings and birthday feasts because long noodles symbolise a long life. The retired teacher offering it to the frightened young Seon-a is a quietly warm gesture: the most Korean version of 'make yourself at home.'
Yeo-jeong tells the detective that the body was officially classified as a 자살 (jasal, suicide) in 2004 but the family never accepted that ruling, which is why it remains unclaimed. The scene is about the legal status of the case, not a depiction of suicide itself, but the term is central to understanding why the body is still in the mortuary and why Myeong-oh's visit there was suspicious. If you or someone you know needs support, contact the Korea Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1393 or the International Association for Suicide Prevention at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
프로포폴 (peuropopool) is a fast-acting intravenous sedative used in Korean aesthetic clinics so patients feel nothing during procedures like filler injections. Its misuse became a major scandal in Korea after several celebrities were found addicted to it — it's now tightly regulated. Yeo-jeong administering it to Yeon-jin while already asking pointed questions about Myeong-oh's death is the episode's most menacing scene.
딸기향 (ttalgi-hyang) means strawberry-scented, and flavoured cigarettes — menthol, fruit, and candy variants — were popular in Korea before tighter regulations. Myeong-oh offering a strawberry-scented cigarette here is partly a taunt and partly a signal that he is relaxed and in control, contrasting sharply with Yeon-jin's barely concealed panic as the one-minute countdown expires.