No.  As the plot stands right now, there is no indication that Lee Da-Il is in a coma.

Some viewers, especially fangirls rooting for a Da-Il-YeoWool OTP, insist that Da-Il’s body is in a coma and being kept alive on life support just like the Woman in Red. They ignore the possibility that the unidentified corpse in the morgue belongs to Da-Il and suggest instead that the corpse is a red herring.

I would be willing to entertain their viewpoint … if it made an iota of sense. 🤪🙂

You see, if a) Lee Da-Il is in coma like the Woman in Red, and b) his soul is wandering around like the Woman in Red, then he’s a fetch, too, like the Woman in Red.

This is the whole dialogue from Episode 5 regarding a fetch.

YW: On the day of her discharge (when Sun Woohye was 12), she threw herself off the hospital rooftop.
CW: That’s strange. You said she looked like she was in her mid-30s
DI: But ghosts look like the way they died…
CW: Even if she fell in a coma 25 years ago when she was 12, that means she died recently.
DI: No. At least five years ago, she killed someone the same way.
YW: (speaking for DI) She was already a ghost five years ago.
CW: Then there’s one possibility left.
SS: What? What is it?
CW: It’s a fetch. She’s in a coma and still alive. But the soul is wandering around. Her body is still growing old.
DI: Then, what about disappearing at 1 o’clock?
YW: (again speaking for DI) Why does she disappear at 1 o’clock then?
CW: A fetch can’t move away from its body completely. She has to return to her body at that time. She can’t leave the area her body is in.

Perhaps this illustration is worth a thousand words.

But Lee Da-Il does NOT behave anything like the Woman in Red.

For one, he doesn’t return to his body or have a midnight or a 1am curfew like the Woman in Red. If his body is in a coma, then his roaming spirit must return to his body at some point in the day. Chae Won was explicit about that. She said the reason the spirit of the comatose Sun Woohye disappears at 1am is because her ghostly form cannot move away from her body completely.

Lee Da-Il isn’t a comatose so his spirit isn’t tied to his body.  Many days have passed since he returned from his muddy grave, but not once has he needed to search for his comatose body to return to it.

For another, he isn’t in a coma because he’s been wearing the same clothes that he had on at the time of his death — dark shirt and olive pants.

He said it himself. “Ghosts look like the way they died.” The Dragonfly girl/young Sun Woohye was wearing her hospital gown when she threw herself off the hospital rooftop but the grown-up version of Sun Woohye is wearing a red dress. Since Sun Woohye is still alive, she’s aged with time and looks different from the young girl who fell off the ledge. Lee Da-Il won’t look any different because he’s already dead. It’s a good thing he looks good in scruffy. 😉

But you don’t have to take MY word for it. Just check out the testimonies of the characters in the story.

Lee Da-Il himself has declared and accepted his own death. Why should I doubt him? He’s supposed to be the top-star Detective of Korea like Song JoongKi is the iconic Korean soldier. 😂 It would be the height of stupidity if he himself couldn’t tell whether he was dead or alive.

YeoWool knows he’s dead, too. She was the first to tell him that he was dead. Even after she found out about fetches from Chae Won, she hasn’t doubted nor changed her mind about his death.

Chae Won considers him dead, too. She counted him as the fourth dead body in the preschool.  The other three were the teacher, the principal and the dog.

Sung Seob regards him as dead, too. It took him longer to accept Lee Da-Il’s death, but he’s resigned to it now. He feeds him as he would a dead person.

And so does the nurse/caretaker of Sun Woohye.  In Episode 6, he acknowledged DI’s death when he wrote in his notes, “Lee Da-Il’s death.” If Da-Il was only in a coma somewhere, he would have referred to it as “Lee Da-Il’s “disappearance” or Lee Da-Il’s “absence.”

Then, in Episode 6 too, Lee Da-Il told YeoWool that it was best for Attorney Baek to believe that he was alive otherwise she wouldn’t help them. Yeowool had wondered why they didn’t want to tell Attorney the TRUTH that he was dead.

As long as there’s no logical proof or visual evidence of him comatose on a hospital bed, I would say that speculation on his alive-but-unconscious state is baseless and delusional. 👻