As courtesy, please give credit and tag @Welmaris when sharing this timeline outside this blog. This is her hard work.
This is awesome, @Welmaris. Thanks! -pm3
Timeline: It’s Okay to Not Be Okay
(c. = circa/around; bef. = before)
1984: Moon Sang Tae born
1989: Jo Jae Soo born. He is one year older than GT. In 2020 he says he’s known the Moon brothers 15 years, and was age 16 when they met.
1990: Moon Gang Tae born. In 2020 says he is 30. Says he was 12 when his mom was murdered. (He could have been referring to his Korean age, by which he was considered one year old from the day of his birth, then another year added every subsequent January 1st, making his Korean age two years higher than his international age.) GT is 6 years younger than ST.
c. 1991: Ko Moon Young born. MY was 19 when her first book came out.
bef. or c. 2000: In an angry outburst, GT tells his mother he’s not responsible for ST and wishes his brother would die. Later that day, while the Moon brothers are playing together on the frozen river, ST falls through the ice. GT hesitates, but then jumps in the water to save ST. ST walks away, not responding to GT’s cries to pull him out. GT almost drowns. MY saves GT by throwing a block of styrofoam into the water.
bef. or c. 2000: GT follows MY during various excursions in a variety of seasons.
bef. or c. 2000: GT is appalled when he sees MY pull the wings off a butterfly, so he runs from her. That night, he comes to the gate of the cursed castle to give her a bouquet of flowers. MY is happy to see him, until she encounters her mother; when MY meets GT at the gate, she tells him to go away and grinds the flowers into the dirt with her foot.
c. 2000: Moon brothers’ mom murdered almost 20 years ago. ST would have been age 16; GT says he was age 12, but he may have been only age 10 by international reckoning.
c. 2000: GT and ST run away from the police station after their mother’s murder to avoid being split up and sent to different government programs.
c. 2000: Do Hui Jae finished The Murder of the Witch of the West, the last book of a fiction series. If alive, she has kept her readers waiting almost 20 years, per Director Oh. Also per Director Oh, readers were left hanging as to what happened to the Witch of the West.
c. 2000: DHJ vanished without a trace the day she completed The Murder of the Witch of the West. Up to the day of her disappearance, the cursed castle was her residence. Ko Dae Hwan, MY’s father, believes he killed his wife, DHJ. MY says she saw her mother die in their house, blood pouring from her head and staining the floor, limbs askew, but that her mother’s body vanished. By international reckoning, MY was age 8-9.
c. 2000: Dust sheets placed on all furniture in the cursed castle about 20 years ago
2000: It has been 20 years since MY left the school where Nam Joo Ri was also a student. MY’s international age was 8-9.
c. 2001-2003: MY says she was 12 when her father “died” with only his body remaining. KDH’s residence was the cursed castle when he lost his mind. If MY was referring to her Korean age, this may have happened as early as 2001; if MY was referring to her international age, it could have happened as late as 2003. By her international age, MY was age 8-9 in 2000 when she left her school and the dust sheets were put on furniture in the cursed castle.
01 Jan 2002: By South Korean reckoning of his age, ST turned 20, which was recognized as the age of majority. At this age he could undertake contracts and other legally binding acts without the consent of a legal guardian. Once he reached the age of majority, ST could act as GT’s legal guardian.
c. 2005: Do Hui Jae registered as deceased 5 years after she disappeared. MY registered her mother’s death. MY would have been Korean age 16 / international age 14 at the time.
2005: JS met GT & ST when he was 16. GT worked part time in JS’s parents’ restaurant.
2005: JS friends with GT & ST for 15 years
c. 2010: JS has followed GT & ST about 10 years
2010: Director Lee has known MY for 10 years. He has published all her books; MY’s first book published.
2019: JR met GT one year ago when they worked at the same hospital.
June 2020: Stated as current date in one of the later episodes of the drama.
@Welmaris,
Thank you for your hard work. I just want to make a small correction. GT was born on July 14, 1991. We see MY reading the information Seung Jae sent her (Episode 2). Is MY the same age? Her birthday is in June (or maybe early July).
Thanks for this awesome timeline @Welmaris! 👏🏻
Thanks for this @Welmaris! This is great. I was trying to figure out without success if GT and ST were 4 years apart or 7 years apart … either way I’d have been wrong! LOL.
It would have been really amazing if GT at age 10 had started taking responsibility for ST all by himself. I thought he’d be closer to 12, but kids in his circumstances grow up pretty fast. 🙂
Thanks @Welmaris! ❤️
Balance and the Recurring Theme of Adoption
I like that this show has got itself well organised, in giving us scene to balance scene, or sprinkling motifs and clues along the way, while relaying more nuance.
For instance in Episode 4 (I re-watched some) there is a scene when GT is a child looking at a grown up MY, and this is balanced by the Episode 9 scene where GT gives MY the flowers and we see child MY looking at a grown up GT. I’d forgotten about the Ep 4 scene, but felt that it revealed GT’s deepest needs.
In Ep 4, MY said she knew that GT wanted love, and she touched his fringe. That was in the convenience store when they had ramen, after the Kwon Ki Do exhibitionist scene. GT stared at her in silence for a long time. The love GT thought of was the love a child wanted, most likely from his mum. The way MY had touched his fringe was more motherly than cheekily as well.
In Ep 9, when MY received GT’s flowers, the memory of what she wanted was the opposite, ie., she did not want a mother’s love. She went back instead to the time she had yearned for a prince to rescue her from the castle. What the prince/child GT had failed to do 20 years earlier, he had succeeded in doing as an adult. MY was finally able to receive his flowers without the shadow of her mother. In the opening animation, the narrator said that when the girl saved the boy, and he followed her, the shadow that followed her vanished.
In Ep 13 which will air tomorrow (1 August), with a theme from the ‘Tale of Two Sisters’, in which the stepmother has a prominent role, I was wondering if these two children will have something more in common, in terms of having step mums. I’ve read the conjectures where either one or both of them might actually not be the natural children of their mums.
Another hint to this is that MY has even been ‘adopted’ by Sang Tae, the default big brother-cum-nagging mum, into the Moon family.
This idea of being adopted (or not), cropped up in ST’s memory of his mum’s murder, and once again involved the same 2 mums, MY’s and GT’s mum and MY’s mum (or her fan). ST heard the killer say to GT’s mum, “I didn’t get to say this earlier. It is me who will take care of my child.” (I do not know if there is a link, but the music of ‘Oh My Darling Clementine’ plays mournfully at this stage.)
The idea of there being a step child is strengthened by Ju Ri’s mum (this was mentioned by another commenter) who twice said in different episodes, that she would like to have GT as her son, and with JR’s encouragement, she said that she’d adopt him straightaway if ST didn’t want him.
It will be interesting to see if all these hints do play out, or if we viewers are being played out, instead!
Thank you so much for doing this @Welmaris! The timeline is most helpful.
A quick add on to your theory about the characters in Wizard of Oz @GB: I think the characters are linked based on their order of meeting Dorothy, which we can derive from this timeline. GT is Dorothy because he just wants a normal life, like how Dorothy just wants to go home. ST is the scarecrow like you suggested, as he is actually wiser than he think he is. (The scarecrow is the first person Dorothy meets.) MY is next, and is the tin man (like how she is described to be the empty can. The tin man is the next person Dorothy meets). Finally Dorothy meets the Lion, who later finds courage when Oz gives him something to drink. Just like the Lion, Juri is usually timid, but man, look at her roar when she gets drunk! (And Jae su? He’s Toto the dog, who faithfully follows Dorothy around. He’s even described as chasing chickens, just like how JS describes himself! Haha)
LOL This is gold @JT7! I wanted to reply to your other post but ran out of time. This is so cute and fits so nicely with our characters. Of course we must have Toto the dog….poor Jae Su LOLOL.
I feel that we should post our comments under the Fairy Tale thread or something actually. 🙂