8 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.
The men are sharing a 유치장 (yuchi-jang), a short-term holding cell attached to a local police station. In Korea, suspects can be held there for up to 48 hours before a judge decides whether to issue a formal arrest warrant. It is distinct from a prison — more like a crowded waiting room with a lock on it.
The sizzling sound is the unmistakable sound of a Korean tabletop grill. Sharing grilled meat — often 삼겹살 (pork belly) — is the standard way Koreans turn a difficult conversation into something bearable. Inviting someone to eat when you have "something to say" is a culturally softer way to deliver hard news or ask a favour.
Gyeyang-jin (계양진) is the fictional provincial town at the centre of the show's cold-case storyline. Korean dramas often set dark backstories in small rural towns, playing on the real cultural tension between tight-knit rural communities — where secrets stay buried — and the anonymity of Seoul.
Hwa-pyeong's grandfather says theirs is a 세습무 (sesupmu) household — a family whose shamanic role is passed down by blood, mainly found in the southern and coastal regions of Korea. This is different from 강신무 (gangsinmu), where a spirit chooses an ordinary person without a shamanic bloodline. The grandfather is explaining why he cannot simply help the neighbour's granddaughter: it is not his calling to take.
The grandmother mentions that her own grandmother was a 만신 (mansin) from Pyeongan Province — the region that is now North Korea. 만신 is an honorific title for a female shaman in the northern tradition. Shamanic lineages from that area became displaced and scattered after the Korean War, which is why the granddaughter's gift has skipped several generations.
Yoon says he will bring a 구마 사제 (guma saje) — a Roman Catholic exorcism priest. The Catholic Church in Korea has an official exorcism protocol: a priest must get 교구 승인 (diocese approval) before performing the rite. This bureaucratic requirement becomes a central source of conflict in the episode, since waiting for approval could leave the child in danger.
Yoon uses the term 부마자 (bumaja) — a Catholic theological term for someone afflicted by a demon, which can range from external harassment to full possession. Korean Catholic vocabulary for exorcism blends Latin Church terms with Korean, and 부마자 is the formal word used in official Church guidelines, which is why Yoon speaks this way to the senior priest.
뺑소니 (ppaengsoni) is the Korean word for a hit-and-run traffic offence. It carries serious criminal penalties in Korea — leaving the scene can change a traffic accident into a felony charge. The show uses it to explain why Jeong Hyeon-su became psychologically vulnerable enough for Park Il-do to find him: guilt and fear of discovery left a crack in his mind.