There seems to be a debate as to whether Lee Da Il (DI) is dead or comatose somewhere.

He’s dead.

1. His “mentor/boss” Sang Seop (SS) couldn’t find his body was because it’s already been unearthed and sent to the morgue. He was the unidentified corpse beside the deceased bodies of the teacher Lee ChanMi and the dog.

Somebody must have found the body and reported it. The body was unidentified because the dog tag (the ID given by the military to its personnel) was detached and left in the mud.

Also, the area around the dig site appeared to have been excavated (different color of soil) and returned to its near-original state (packed down evenly). The teacher wouldn’t have had time to level the ground evenly in her disturbed state of mind. Of course, it’s possible that the set director or the greensman had a lapse here and didn’t prep the scene well.

The only plot twist here that I could imagine is that he was administered some drug before he was buried that would fake death until the accomplices of the Woman in Red, dressed up in medical examiners’ white coats, could wheel away his body from the morgue. But what would be the point of this exercise? Why keep him in a coma? So two comatose people could duke it out? 

2. Jung Weol knew he was dead. She had a premonition he died when she dreamt that he landed splat on her tent and she woke up. She tried to call him up but he didn’t pick up. Then when he touched her shoulder that night, she flipped him. She noticed that a basketball rolled right through his leg so she realized then that he was a ghost, and not a corporeal being.

Not only that, he couldn’t pick up objects except for her hearing device. He couldn’t get his key from the mailbox. But Woman in Red could handle objects. She picked up the shard of glass and handed it to his mother (Episode 3, at 37:58). Her child version was picking off the wings of dragonflies and she held the lollipop.

*BTW, from what I understand of his ghostly existence, a moving object or body (like a person walking, the manager who was going to jump off, or the basketball rolling past his leg) would just go THROUGH his body.  However, a stationary object (like a wall, door, doorknob, chair, or bed) would remain solid and immovable. That’s why he could sit on chairs but he couldn’t go through walls.

3. He clearly saw his dead body buried in the soil. He told Jung Weol that seeing is believing and that the only way SS would believe the news of his death was to see an evidence of his death. That was why DI led them to the burial site although he knew that his body was already in the morgue. His dog tag had been left behind and was still buried in the ground. How did he know that they’d find the tag? He wasn’t wearing it.

Note: I did wonder where these two men brought the cadaver and what they did with it.

4. In Episode 4, he couldn’t eat unless food is offered to directly to him. It’s a good thing that SS observed the customary manner that food’s offered to the dead so he was able to finally eat. In contrast, the Woman in Red had no problems licking that lollipop in Episode 4.

An aside. This was a successful product placement. I suddenly had a craving for Subway after this scene. He ordered no onions, no pickles, no olives, and no cucumbers. And extra jalapenos and cheese, Lettuce and tomatoes. And just mustard for the sauce. Meanwhile, I hankered for roast beef on white bread, with Swiss cheese, lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, green peppers, pickles, spinach, extra olives, and 3 pieces of jalapenos on the side. Regular Mayonnaise. lol. Everything but the raw onions.

5. Like a poltergeist, Dae Il could physically harm people by throwing objects around and shattering glass. Didn’t he destroy the chandelier and toppled the bookcase at his house, almost injuring Jung Weol? If he was comatose like the Woman in Red, he wouldn’t be able to do this.

According to Dae Il, the Woman in Red couldn’t physically hurt people as in stab, stomp or punch. She could only cause injury by manipulating people’s mind. As Dae Il said to JungWool, “she manipulates people’s mind. The weakest and the darkest mind. A sense of guilt. Fear. Things like that.”

True, the Woman handed the DI’s mother the shard of glass but she couldn’t stab her the mother herself. She could push Yi Rang’s hand to her throat, but she couldn’t cut Yi Rang directly with the knife. The actual act of killing had to be executed by the victim.

6. According to the coroner/medical examiner Chae Won, DI died already. And Chae Won was an expert on ghosts.

Here’s their conversation… or rather monologue.

CW: So, what are you? Why are you here?
DI: You can see me? (No, she couldn’t. Nor could she hear him.)
CW: I can’t see ghosts like you anymore. (Here, what she meant is she couldn’t see him anymore because he was a ghost. She wasn’t making a distinction between him and the other ghost. She was in fact lumping him with the rest of ghosts. It’s like I was to comment, “Sorry! I can’t date ugly people like you anymore.” I don’t mean that there’s a subset of ugly people that comprised only of him. Lol.)

CW: I could see them and hear them when I was 10 but all that was over at age 15. (WHY?) Now all I can do is feel them.

And that’s why she FELT his face – that was all she could do now with ghosts and he was one of them. She could neither SEE nor hear him but she could certainly feel him. Thus, she touched his face and confirmed that he was died and now had come back as a ghost.

CW: (continuing) Three victims have now died at this preschool. Four including you.

Note: She said there were four deaths: Lee Chan Mi, the dog, the principal, and Lee Da Il.

CW: (laughing). Ah! So, you were the one who bit the dog.

She laughed because the mystery about the dog bite was solved and it was funny. We’ve heard of dogs biting humans but never the reverse: a human biting a dog. For me, she had an odd sense of humor. She only perked up when she discovered that there was mystery afoot involving ghost.

7. Dae Il felt different from the comatose Woman in Red.

Remember when Chae Won touched the dead dog to see what happened to it before dying?

She saw two blurry images. One was DI trying to get away from the dog. And the other was the Woman in Red petting the dog. Chae Won was looking UP at the Woman from the dog’s perspective and she FELT the WOMAN’S hand. She snatched her hand away and said in a surprised voice, “Your hand. It’s cold…and burning.” She was referring to Woman.

Then she whispered, “What’s this? What were you so scared of?”

When Chae Won touched the spirit of DI, she didn’t jump back in shock. His face wasn’t cold and burning to the touch like that of Woman in Red.

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So those are my reasons for claiming that Lee Da Il is dead. He wasn’t anything like the Woman in Red who’s still alive but in a coma. Unless there are major inconsistencies in the plot, it’s hard for the screenwriters to backtrack.