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.
이사라 mentions that no warrant (영장) has been issued yet and that she was brought in under 긴급체포 (geup-chepо), an emergency arrest without a warrant. Korean law allows police to detain a suspect for up to 48 hours this way, after which they must either obtain a warrant or release the person. Her knowing exactly how long she can stall is a deliberate power move.
이사라 sneers at the female officer by calling her a '9급 공무원' (ninth-grade civil servant), the entry-level rank in Korea's government employment ladder. It's meant as a put-down — implying the officer is low-status and therefore beneath her. The insult says more about 이사라's class snobbery than about the officer herself.
The women at the market are talking about 김장 (kimjang) — the annual late-autumn tradition of making and storing large quantities of kimchi for winter. UNESCO recognises kimjang as Intangible Cultural Heritage. Families and neighbours often gather together to make hundreds of heads of cabbage worth at once, so the comment that it's running late this year signals that life has been unusually hectic.
동은 quietly reads out a date and name — '87년 6월 16일 새벽 1시 10분 윤소희' — as she scans the market. She has been methodically logging every piece of evidence connected to her classmates. This habit of writing down exact times and full names echoes the meticulous revenge ledger she has kept since high school.
하도영 and his opponent are playing 바둑 (baduk), the Korean name for the board game known internationally as Go. The stranger's description — 'luring you in, then collapsing your house' — is a real strategic concept in baduk where a player lets the opponent expand before dismantling their territory from within. 동은's tutor taught her the game specifically so she could think this way about her revenge.
동은 has given the 무당 (mudang, a Korean female shaman) 윤소희's birth details so the shaman reads 소희's 사주 (sajу) — a four-pillar birth chart used in Korean folk belief to map out a person's fate. The shaman then recommends a 굿 (gut), an elaborate shamanic ritual meant to release bad energy. Charging large sums for a 굿 is a well-known pressure tactic; 동은 is deliberately setting this up as a trap.
동은 tells the 보살 (bossal — a lay female shaman-assistant) that someone is demanding 십억 (10 billion won, roughly $7–8 million USD) from her, then frames the money as a choice between paying the blackmailer or giving it to the 보살 for a new 법당 (Buddhist/shamanist prayer hall). It's a manipulation designed to make the 보살 feel like a beneficiary rather than a pawn.
혜정 jokes that 이사라 in prison clothes with her bleached hair behind bars looks like a scene from a 미드 (mideu — shorthand Koreans use for American TV dramas). Shows like Orange Is the New Black were enormously popular in Korea, and the comparison is equal parts dark humour and a dig at how absurd 이사라's situation looks.
여정 mentions he last saw this man when he was working as a 군의관 (gun-uigwan), a doctor who fulfils mandatory military service as an officer physician rather than an ordinary conscript. In Korea, male doctors typically complete their military duty this way. It pins the timeline of their relationship at roughly three years ago.
여정 is applying to work as a doctor inside a 교도소 (gyodoso — correctional facility). The reference to his father's 유지 (yujee — dying wish or legacy) hints that his father had a connection to this prison or its inmates, adding a layer of personal mission beneath what looks like a routine job application.
동은 uses the word 천륜 (chеоllun), literally 'heaven's order' — the Confucian idea that the parent-child relationship is a sacred bond decreed by heaven itself, not a human choice. Earlier in the episode a neighbour used the same word to express sympathy. 동은 turns it back on her mother as an accusation: it was 엄마, not 동은, who broke that sacred bond first, by selling her daughter.
불 (fire) has been 동은's signature weapon since childhood — her bullies used a hair-straightening iron on her skin, and she has used the threat of fire throughout her revenge plan. 동은 invoking it now in direct confrontation with her mother closes a circle: the woman who did nothing while 동은 was burned is now facing the same fear.
동은 names her mother her '첫 가해자' (first perpetrator / first abuser), placing her even before 박연진 in the chain of harm. In Korean discourse around school violence and family trauma, identifying the 가해자 (perpetrator) is a formal, loaded term — it comes from legal and psychological frameworks, not everyday speech. 동은 using it about her own mother is a deliberate, devastating indictment.