Veterans of this blog know that I don’t do recap. Instead, I give you my interpretations and theories of the drama. If you don’t find them palatable, then you’re free to exit the blog. Don’t obsess and hate-follow me. Especially since this is a new year.

Like I said previously in Jan 2022 dramas, I’m watching this drama in pieces because the graphic monster scenes disturb me. I have to either pause and take a breather or fast-forward then replay the skipped scenes later. Either way, the end result for me is a disjointed understanding of the backstory, instead of a flowing saga of immortal hero. I think the director was aiming to create a seamless transition from the Goryeo period, through the Joseon era, and finally to the modern times. If you notice for instance, the opening sequence showed an image belonging to one era blending into another image from a different period.

To mention a few:

a complex formation of tree branching out into a map of an urban area
a yellow median strip of a highway turning into a red blood trickling down a sword
a deep water-well changing into a cave with strips of rag hanging from the ceiling (which typically denotes a shrine to a spirit) then changing into a long underground tunnel

These images are supposed to be inter-connected. However, after two episodes, all I’m getting is fragmented and jumbled impressions of the plot.

Let’s begin with the term bulgasal.

1. Bulgasal

Right from the start, we were told that the Bulgasal was an evil spirit.

We heard it from the pregnant woman who believed that the Bulgasal would kill them because of her unborn child. She offered her baby to the corpse-eating, three-eyed monster called a Jomagu. But it took one look at her round belly and ran away.

One would think that the mother-to-be would have rejoiced at the amazing superpower of her unborn baby. Her baby saved her and the villagers from death. Instead, the stupid woman started wailing that her baby was cursed and that he must not be born because the Bulgasal would hunt him down.

Soon after, the spineless and selfish thing hanged herself to avoid giving birth. Nice logic, right? She didn’t want the Bulgasal to kill her, so she preempted death, and killed herself.

And just as a reminder, two thousand years ago there lived Blessed Virgin Mary. She, too, must have been a frightened pregnant teenager. But instead of choosing to abort the infant Jesus or abandoning the child when King Herod and his army hunted them down, she protected him. And the rest was history.

The pregnant mother wasn’t the only one who feared the Bulgasal. The old Hag also believed that the Bulgasal would come and kill them all if they kept the baby. The hag spread the rumor that the baby shouldn’t have been born and should have died with the mother because it was cursed.

Hag: Bulgasal has cursed the baby.
Folks: What? Bulgasal? The baby is cursed?
Hag: It has no soul, so it cannot be killed. Bulgasal, an evil spirit.

She was referring to the Bulgasal, of course, not the baby. A Bulgasal has no soul and cannot be killed. It was a maleficent spirit.

Folks: What is she saying?
Hag: And Bulgasal has a grudge against your baby from a previous life.
Folks: Then what should we do? What in the world is a Bulgasal?
Hag: Once it has a grudge against someone, it will chase their soul to the end.

She was clearly fearmongering.

Because she was the recognized expert in these superstitions and folklore, she convinced the villagers to fear the innocent child, causing them to shun and mistreat the innocent child. I say that she was largely to blame for the atrocities done to the child. Although she didn’t join the men in killing the boy, she might as well have been holding a hoe, pitchfork, or knife like them. She was the one who instilled irrational fear in them, and instigated mass hysteria against the boy.

As it turned out, her assertions that the Bulgasal:

a. was evil,
b. couldn’t be killed, and
c. would relentlessly chase a soul for a grudge,

were proven wrong by the Lady in Red, the first known Bulgasal that Hwal encountered.

By the end of Episode 1, we saw that the Red Lady was none of these things the Old Hag said. In reality, the Bulgasal Lady in Red:

a. rescued and protected the child Hwal,
b. was killed by Hwal’s sword after his soul migrated to her,
c. wasn’t chasing after Hwal because of a grudge. It was Hwal who chased after the Red Lady because he had grudge on the Bulgasal for cursing his family.

That’s why I wrote back in the Eps 1 & 2 Open Thread that I wish the writer would pick a thematic lane and stick with it. The writer deliberately misled the viewers in these early episodes for cheap “Gotcha! Fooled You!” tricks.

From what I gathered from these two episodes, a Bulgasal is essentially an immortal being. Unlike monsters, they can’t die. However, in terms of conduct, a Bulgasal can become like a monster when it chooses to kill humans and feed on human blood. A monster eats human.

To me, the Bulgasal got a bum rap when one or a few of its species chose to live like a monster. These monstrous Bulgasal were the ones that the old Hag learned about from folk tales because they left dead bodies.

The old Hag wouldn’t know about the existence of the nonviolent Bulgasal, like the Red Lady, because they left humans in peace. The Bulgasal, like the Red Lady and Hwal, lived undetected because they learned to coexist with the mortals.

So to summarize what I learned:

A Bulgasal is immortal. A monster is mortal.
No monster is a bulgasal.

A monster eats human. A Bulgasal can refrain from eating human.
A bulgasal may become monster-like when it consumes human.

2. The Love Triangle

I’m going on a limb here and say that the real couple in the story (or “OTP” in kdrama jargon) is Hwal and the reincarnated Red Lady. Not Hwal and his previous wife, the general’s daughter.

The names are going to get me confused so let me list them.

a. The cursed hero: Dan Hwal

He had no name till he met the General Dan Geuk. The General named him “Hwal” meaning “rebirth.” During the monster quest in the Joseon period, his comrades in battle both venerated and feared him because he was like unstoppable killing machine.

Special powers: regeneration. His injuries heal themselves in time.

b. The Lady in Red: Min SangUn

She, too, didn’t have a name in the past. She was venerated like a goddess during the Joseon period.

Special powers? For now, all I see is her self-preservation. She has the ability to detect Monster. Her hands tingle – like Spiderman’s tingling sense – when monsters are nearby.

I think we were also a given a hint about their previous lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if both were immortal beings – similar to deities – in their former lives.

See the imagery here? They had halos.

They could have both been immortals but for some reason they had a falling-out, and Hwal lost his immortality. He was reincarnated as a mortal baby.

The night after he met the Red Lady again and realized she was a Bugasal, he dreamt of her. In his dream, the Lady in Red stabbed him. The knife pierced his right hand.

That’s why when he was born, he had a cut on his right hand. He got it from the previous event. He bore the scar ever since.

In turn, when Hwal killed the Lady in Red, he plunged his sword into her right shoulder. From then on, she bore that scar in every reincarnation, until she was born with a twin sister.

Hwal: Why did you do it? Why did you have to kill my innocent wife and son? You could only have killed me. Tell me why. Tell me why!
Lady in Red: (communicating telepathically) This was all your doing. What have you done? You have created more bad karma. And you have brought upon another retribution. I despise you. Truly, I despise you.
Hwal: What do you mean?
Lady in Red: I will be born again with this scar that you have given me. (and then she disintegrated into embers)

It was her twin, Min Sang Yeon, who took on the scar for her. The twin sister’s death was an interesting plot twist because, without the burden of centuries of memories, Sangwoon could start anew. In a sense, her reincarnation in the present day was her rebirth, too. She was starting with a clean slate, just like Hwal started with a clean slate more than 600 years ago.

As for the killings in the forest, I don’t think the Lady in Red killed Hwal’s wife and son.

Hwal mistakenly thought she murdered his family, but it didn’t occur to him that his wife and son died from neck bites, not from a sword. If the Red Lady had killed his family, she would have used the sword on them, too. I think another creature killed his wife and son, just like another creature – not Hwal — killed Sang Woon’s twin sister and mother in their apartment.

As to why the Red Lady killed Hwal, for now, I could think of three reasons why:

One, mercy killing. He lost his wife and son, so she was doing him a favor by killing him and letting him join his beloved family in the afterlife.

Two, jealousy. They had a life together in his previous reincarnation, but he was married to another woman, and had a son with her.

Three, vengeance. It’s possible that both the Lady in Red and Hwal were tricked into believing that the other person caused the death of their families, and were seeking revenge on the wrong person. They had a never-ending circle (or karma) because neither one could forgive the other person.

c. Dan Sol, the general’s daughter: Min Shi Ho. As a child, she bound her hands so she wouldn’t be able to read other people’s past.

I think Hwal married her out of pity or sympathy because she too was shunned by people who didn’t understand her powers and feared her.

He could also have felt obligated to marry her as she was the daughter of the man he looked up to as a father.

3. The Soul

According to the drama, immortals don’t die because they don’t have a soul. The soul is the hallmark of a mortal being.

But even before Hwal lost his soul to the Red Lady, and became a Bulgasal, he was already displaying signs of immortality. In his battles with the monsters, he proved to be indestructible like an immortal. No monster survived in a fight against him. None of his injuries he sustained in battle incapacitated him for long. Nobody in his command saw him as an equal or as a friend. He was the outsider because of the curse.

On top of the original curse, the monsters he slayed cursed him, too. They vowed to remember his soul in their next reincarnation so they could exact revenge on him. At first, their grudge against him didn’t bother him because he didn’t expect to be born again.

But after his soul mysteriously transplanted to the Red Lady, he belatedly realized that the reason he couldn’t find her reincarnated self was because the reborn monsters were killing her before he could get to her. They were targeting her since she carried his soul.

Hwal said, “What should I do now? Things have gotten quite complicated. You finally became a human after taking my soul. But you also took my karma.”

Karma could refer to two things. First, the monsters were hunting her down for revenge because he hunted them to extinction. Since she took his karma, she would have to endure the monsters’ vengeance originally intended for him. Second, everyone who was near and dear to him suffered and died because of the Bulgasal curse. Since she took his karma, she too would see her loved ones suffer and die, too.

Hwal continued, “Hang in there. Before a reincarnated Monster gets to you, I will find you first.”

He knew then that if he was to take back his soul from her, he would have to reach her first and kill her before the other monsters did. In other words, he needed to get his soul back from her to end his immortality. For him, immortality had been hell because of the never-ending pain.

To me, however, even when he had a soul, he acted like he didn’t have one or needed one.

Theoretically speaking, souls are supposed to make a person find a kindred spirit in another person. To have a soul is to feel and understand another human being and become connected with him/her.

But in the case of Hwal, the words of the old Hag haunted him. She said, “Anyone who stays by his side will throw up blood, and get dirt in their eyes.” Because of those cursed words, he abstained from forming attachments lest bad things happen to them.

I think his inability to form familial bonds is the real tragic impact of the curse. He had a soul, but he couldn’t use it to bond with others.

And that’s why the images of clasped hands are relevant to me.

Those few times when he held hands with somebody were the rare occasions when he showed signs of having a soul. He opened himself up to another person.

The first hand he touched was the Red Lady who rescued him from the water. Her touch led to his first awareness of her existence, and the moment was forever imprinted on him. It’s too bad though that he’s forgotten their true nature of their relationship from his previous lifetime.

Next was the general who held out his hand to him. This touch meant rebirth since the general gave him new life as his adopted son and introduced him to his profession as monster-slayer.

The third hand was his wife, Dan Sol. He forced her to hold his bloodied hand so she could glimpse into his past, and see who his true soulmate was.

She said, “I saw the woman who saved you. The woman you kept remembering. Let go of me.”

Ouch!

The fourth hand he regretted not holding was his son’s. He didn’t want to touch him because he felt guilty for causing his eyes to bleed.

But at his son’s death, he wished he’d taken his hand and embraced him when he could have.

Since the soul is intangible, I think a pair of clasped hands is a good symbolic way of showing that his soul had touched another one.

4. Camera Shots

I wish I had more time to explore the use of mirrors in Episode 2. I’ll just mention a few.

a. The hallway mirror and the hotel mirror

When SangUn rushed home and bolted the door, she was seen in the hallway mirror.

Likewise, when her twin SangYeon bolted the hotel door, and drew the curtain, she was seen in the mirror.

To me, the mirror was used as a signal that something creepy was about to be revealed. Both times, SangYeon told SangUn about their past lives because the Bulgasal and the monster were on closing in on them. The things not visible on the mirror were much closer than they thought.

b. The double- and triple-images of SangUn and ShiHo.

This was a neat trick because it looked like SangUn and ShiHo had ghosts behind them. To me, the multiple mirror images behind them hinted at their past reincarnated lives. They might exist as one person, but their souls cycled through many rebirths.

c. SangYeon looking into the mirror and revealing her scar

This shot is pretty common. Directors often use a mirror scene where the female lead is staring at her reflection to indicate that she’s resolved to do something dangerous yet necessary.

Here, Sangyeon decided to bring SangUn to a safe place so she could put an end to the karma. Since SangYeon alone had the memories of the Lady in Red, and the scar from her previous encounter with Hwal, she needed to do this on her own.

d. Dolly Zoom

This is not a mirror trick but a camera trick. While the camera lens was steadily focused on Sangyeon’s blank face (note: the size of her face doesn’t change), the camera itself was moving forward to show more of the background behind Sangyeon’s head. This is called a Dolly Zoom.

And the effect of this camera trick is to disorient the viewers. It seemed like the world is closing in on her. And the viewers sense the impending danger.

So there you go, my first impressions of this drama. Let me move on to Episodes 3 & 4 so I can catch up with you all.