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.
Vincenzo shouts '에 미오' (è mio), meaning 'it's mine' in Italian. The Geumga Plaza tenants — who don't speak Italian — immediately start mimicking the phrase back and forth, turning a tense standoff into accidental comedy. In Korean dramas, characters repeating a foreign phrase like a playground chant is a classic slow-burn gag.
수남 yells '연장!' (yeunjang), literally 'tools' or 'implements,' which in street-gang slang means 'grab your weapons.' It's a coded command thugs use so bystanders won't immediately understand what's being ordered. The word shows up again later in the episode as a label for shady behavior.
명희 says her specialty is starting with a 미담 (美談, a feel-good human-interest story) and ending with a 괴담 (怪談, a horror story or dark exposé). This describes a real technique in Korean investigative reporting: build a sympathetic public profile of a target first, then release damaging revelations so the contrast is maximally devastating.
명희 claims she engineered a false corruption case that drove Minister Kim to take his own life. The phrase '자살하게 만든' means 'made him kill himself.' This is presented as a deliberate political weapon — a reminder that in the drama's world, fabricated scandals can have lethal consequences.
유찬 quotes 지피지기 백전불태 (知彼知己 百戰不殆): 'Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in danger.' It's a line from Sun Tzu's Art of War that Korean students learn in school, so quoting it here signals that he's switching from emotional resistance to strategic thinking.
빈센조 orders 떡볶이 (tteokbokki, spicy rice-cake stir-fry) and specifies 밀떡 (wheat-flour rice cakes) with 옛날 고추장 (old-style fermented chili paste) and a little seasoning powder. 밀떡 are chewier and cheaper than the more common 쌀떡 (rice-flour cakes); requesting the retro version signals nostalgic, unpretentious taste — which is exactly why 차영 calls it '싼마이스럽다,' meaning cheap or low-rent.
'싼마이' comes from the Japanese '三枚' (sanmai, three sheets), a term from cheap B-movie culture that drifted into Korean slang to mean tacky, low-budget, or downmarket. 차영 uses it to tease 빈센조 for having surprisingly unglamorous taste — a mob lawyer who orders the most basic street food.
래리 강 mentions coaching extras for a zombie film called '울산행2,' a parody title riffing on the massively popular 2016 Korean zombie blockbuster 부산행 (Train to Busan). Swapping 부산 (Busan) for 울산 (a neighboring industrial city) is an in-joke — the show pokes fun at Korean cinema's love of sequel titles.
빈센조 cites Korea's 임대차 보호법, which requires developers to pay tenants 권리금 (goodwill compensation / key money) and coordinate eviction timing through a court bailiff. The law exists specifically to protect small-business tenants like the Geumga Plaza shopkeepers, making Babel's forced-demolition plan outright illegal — which is central to the conflict.
유찬 pours 막걸리 (makgeolli), a milky, lightly fermented rice wine that is Korea's oldest alcoholic drink. It's cheap, beloved by older generations, and traditionally drunk from a bowl rather than a glass. 유찬's reassurance that its hangover is mild — while immediately pushing 빈센조toward shot after shot — is a classic Korean drinking-buddy move.
빈센조 asks why 유찬's firm is called 지푸라기, meaning 'a straw' or 'a wisp of straw.' 유찬 explains it refers to 지푸라기라도 잡는 심정 ('the feeling of clutching even a straw'), a Korean idiom for desperate last-ditch hope. Naming a law firm 지푸라기 tells clients: we are the very last thing you have left to hold onto.
빈센조 throws an impromptu '오리지날 시칠리아식 와인 파티' (original Sicilian-style wine party) and has a YouTube-style 방송인 (broadcaster) livestream it, asking viewers to subscribe and like. Hosting a flashy social-media party to draw a crowd — and crucially, witnesses and cameras — to a contested site is a real tactic used in Korean tenant-rights disputes to make forced demolition politically costly.
빈센조 tells 차영 that the real issue isn't just a building — he hints at something far larger, using words like 마약 (drugs) and 거대 카르텔 (massive cartel). This is the moment the show signals that Babel Group's crimes go well beyond corporate bullying, reframing the entire series as a crime thriller rather than just a real-estate drama.