This kdrama is adapted from the 2011 Korean movie “Spellbound” (or “Chilling Romance”) starring Son YeJin (“Crash Landing on You”) and Lee MinKi (“Because This is My First Life”). LMK plays a street magician who revamps his shtick after encountering Son YeJin. He creates a horror-magic show, casting her as an avenging ghost. Little does he know that she is haunted by ghosts.

As veteran kdrama viewers, we can all predict the movie’s lesson about love, right? One takeaway is that love means the couple choose to stay together even when the inconceivable, e.g., ghosts and paranormal activities, drives them apart.

This kdrama “Spooky in Love” is unlikely to stray far from that theme. Also, it has replicated some of the iconic details of the film. For example,

a. The female lead, Cheon YeoRi, sleeps in a teepee.
b. She accidentally rips the shirt of the male lead Ma GongUk while she’s drunk.
c. GangUk scares the child ghost then gets scared in return after seeing the child on his back.
d. YeoRi gives GangUk soju to drink before confessing about the ghosts.

Nonetheless, I hope that this kdrama won’t follow the original plot (especially, the contrived final scene involving an airport reunion). I’m enjoying the addition of doting grandmas, love triangle, and forced marriage prospects. Even the one-note villains like Cheon HaRi and her fiancé, Park SunJae make the story diverting.

Now here are my notes.

1. Cheon YeoRi’s deceased college friend

His name was Kang JiHwan. He was the biological son of the Kang family. Apparently, his mother (and father, too?) had kept it secret from others that his “twin” brother, Kang MinHwan (the second male lead), was adopted from the US.

Kang JiHwan (JH) died in a boating accident when he and YeoRi were in college. For some reason she had fallen into the ocean, and JH dove in after her. They were both rescued but only she was revived. After drowning, JH’s ghost began haunting her.

Because he died in the water, it makes sense then that his ghost brings water with him whenever he appears before Yeori. For instance, during class, YeoRi observed water pooling beside her then saw him seated beside her.

Note: the lecturer was talking about graves. She couldn’t be more relevant. She said, “some [graves] have a high, round top, which we call ‘bun.’ If a body is buried underground with a flat top, it’s called ‘myo’”. Hmmm…. I wonder what do you call watery grave like the vast ocean that JH died in?

Then, on her engagement day, it rained. To me, the rain signaled JH’s appearance and interference. He scared off her fiancé-to-be by flooding the elevator and dragging the poor fellow down the bottomless water.

Thus, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was JH’s ghost who appeared in GangUk’s bathroom and scribbled the message on the foggy mirror to find YeoRi. He’s what’s known in Korean folklore as “mul-gwishin” or water ghost.

As of Episode 4, I’m not sure what his motives are for haunting YeoRi. It’s reasonable to assume that he scared off YeoRi’s would-be-fiancé because of jealousy. But I thought that if he’s jealous of anybody showing interest in YeoRi, then he should’ve haunted GangUk, too, because YeoRi’s becoming close to him. But he didn’t. Perhaps he doesn’t want to scare GangUk away because he would like to one day inhabit GangUk’s body? Whatever…

Note: JH is the major ghost who haunts YeoRi, but other ghosts also come to visit her to ask for her assistance in resolving their grievances. A shaman told her that helping these ghosts out is her form of “payback” for being brought back to life.

2. The necklace

In Episode 3, the second male lead MinHwan (MH) is seen studying the pendant of a necklace. It has a green stone in the middle of a star.

This appears to be the same necklace that YeoRi was wearing in Episode 4 when she was pulled out of the water. As her rescuer was compressing her chest, the sun came out of the clouds, and the pendant emitted light. She then miraculously came to, spitting up water. Meanwhile, JH was nonresponsive to hands-on CPR.

Unless there are two pendants like that in existence, I wonder how it ended up with MH.

Note: In the movie “Spellbound,” the necklace has a magical purpose. The female lead character had borrowed it from her best friend to try on. It was supposedly a lucky charm (or amulet to ward off disaster) given to her best friend by her grandmother. Before she could hand it back, however, their school bus had a freak accident. Because the lead female character was wearing the lucky charm, she survived but her best friend didn’t. Her best friend began haunting her, ostensibly to get the amulet back, but I daresay, she was haunting her really out of spite because she died while the lead female didn’t.

I look forward to seeing how the screenwriters of “Spooky in Love” will turn the necklace into a major item in the kdrama.

3. The grandmothers

Cheon YeoRi’s grandmother is Baek GyeongJa, the head of the family corporation. She favors YeoRi over her other grandchildren, namely, HaRi and DongJun, because their father isn’t her biological son. (This reminds me of the 2ML, MinHwan’s family situation. More on this later.)

Note: As of Episode 4, I’m guessing that YeoRi’s father (not her mother) is her grandmother’s biological child as she and her cousin HaRi have the same last name, Cheon.

Meanwhile, Ma GangUk’s grandmother is Paeng MyoSun. She’s a great believer of shamanism and most likely a shaman herself, but no, she isn’t the “Shaman Baek” whom YeoRi’s grandmother hired to cast away YeoRi’s ghosts. Unless the translation is wrong, that shaman is referred to as a “he.”

Note: GangUk’s grandmother may not be a chaebol like YeoRi’s grandmother as she doesn’t own a large business corporation involved in finance, technology, infrastructure, shipping, etc. But I sense that she’s part of the landed gentry and wealthy in her own right, i.e., she owns large tracts of land that YeoRi’s Reina Group could use and develop into hotels and resorts.

As much as YeoRi is touted as her grandmother’s heiress, I think GangUk is in a better situation as he’s the sole heir of his grandmother’s fortune.

4. Complicated family relationships

a. Kang MinHwan

He isn’t the Kang’s biological son. I wonder if his adoptive mother/father ever wished that he had drowned instead of JiHwan.

I thought his mother’s words – back in Episode 3 when he saw her weeding at the Jeju resort – sounded ominous.

MH: Why are you doing that yourself when we have gardeners?
Mother: (evasive) I heard about the nuisance.
MH: Oh. It’s been taken care of. By the way, did you have a visitor earlier?
Mother: (evasive still) They grow so quickly. If you don’t pluck them in time, the weeds will take over the whole garden.

Were the weeds just metaphorical? Did she view MinHwan as some sort of interloper or outsider trying to take over the family business?

Furthermore, I’m going to assume for now that it was GangUk’s grandmother who paid MinHwan’s mother a visit. MinHwan’s mother didn’t want to discuss her visitor with MinHwan, just like GangUk’s grandmother didn’t want to reveal her Jeju visit to GangUk hence her denial.

b. YeoRi’s cousin, Cheon HaRi

“Stupid is as stupid does.” I think her mother is the one to keep an eye on as she schemes better than HaRi.

5. Is GangUk dead?

Episode 4 has a great cliffhanger. It left viewers guessing about GangUk’s state of health. Is he dead, alive, comatose, or miraculously revived like what happened to YeoRi after her drowning?

I say he’s alive for a couple of reasons.

The first reason: the upcoming engagement trope demands that he’s alive, not a ghost.

YeoRi’s grandmother gave her two months to get engaged and I don’t see her settling for MinHwan. She’s friend-zoned MinHwan but GangUk moves her. In particular, his simple gesture of covering her eyes back in Episode 3 when they fell off the cliff touched her so deeply that she thanked him afterwards.

YR: Thank you. I might be used to how things are, but that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid.

GangUk brought it up in Episode 4. He told her, “I finally understood what you meant in Jeju island.” He assumed that she was thanking him for being there, for SHARING the experience with her. He continued, “It must have been so hard to live with.”

No, I think he only got it partly correct. Indeed, she’s thankful that she wasn’t alone in witnessing death. But more than that, she’s grateful that he tried to SHIELD her from seeing death.

You see, she’s always tried to suck it up and brave the gruesome deaths all by herself, but he’s the very first one to protect her from the sight of death. He wanted to spare her from the trauma.

Without a doubt, he left her a favorable image; he was a protector. He protected her from the falling luggage. He protected from sight of death. He protected her from her kidnappers.

He’s the obvious choice to become her fiancé so he can’t die before the engagement. Lol.

The second reason: his clothes were a give-away. 

If you rewatch the ghost scenes, all the ghosts were wearing the clothes that they had died in when they came to haunt YeoRi. For example, in Episode 1, the ghost of the cab driver was wearing his uniform. In Episode 2, the ghost of Park SeungJae’s girlfriend was wearing the same white blouse and black skirt. Then, in Episode 3, the ghost of the child was wearing his rugby shirt.

This wasn’t the case for GangUk.

When GangUk rescued YeoRi from the thugs, he was wearing a layered outfit, that is, a white Tshirt under a black button-up shirt under a brown jacket.

Later, when he died on the hospital bed, he was wearing the white Tshirt. In fact, the nurse had to cut it open.

But when he appeared before YeoRi as a ghost – or what she assumed to be his ghost – he wore the black shirt with the brown jacket; the white Tshirt was gone.

To me, there are two possibilities. One, in her distressed, guilt-ridden mind, YeoRi could have imagined his dying on the hospital bed. Or two, he “miraculously” came back to life, like YeoRi did during the boating accident.

Either way, he rushed out the ER to go after her because he was worried that she would blame herself over his “death.” As he could hardly wear the ripped-up white Tshirt, he grabbed his remaining clothes: the black shirt and brown jacket.

I think after YeoRi hugged him, she realized that he wasn’t a ghost after all because he had a physical form, that is, he wasn’t made of thin air.

Anyway, we’ll know in a couple of days whether he’s alive or not.

6. Coincidence or not?

a. After GangUk and YeoRi’s first encounter in the forest, his grandmother warned him to stay away from women born in the year of the Black Monkey. When he met YeoRi again while chasing the killers of the cab driver, he noticed her Black Monkey charm hanging from her rearview mirror. He assumed that she was born in 1992, the year of the Black Monkey, and that she was the woman his grandma was warning him about.

Note: I wonder however whether she displayed that charm because she knew it represented the year she was born or because she simply thought it was cute. Was she really born in 1992?

GU: But what’s the deal with that specific year?
Granny: There’s nothing wrong with the year itself. The problem is that it’s incompatible with you. Remember that.
GU: Okay. Fine. Eat up.

Compatibility aside, had he heeded his granny’s warning to stay away from her, the killers wouldn’t have been apprehended, and the cab driver wouldn’t have found justice.

b. GangUk’s granny also warned him to stay away from large bodies of water, but it came too late. He and YeoRi had already fallen off the cliff and into the sea of Jeju.

Had her warning been timely, and had he obeyed her, then the body of the missing granddaughter of the haenyeo wouldn’t have been found, and the designer would’ve committed a perfect crime.

c. Last but not least, on March 25, the last day of his month-long ghost encounters, his grandma warned him not to go anywhere that night in order to stay out of harm’s way.

This time, her warning came at the exact right moment. But he chose to ignore it. He went out because he knew that YeoRi was in danger.

I don’t know for certain whether his grandmother is psychic or not, and whether she can actually see the future or not, but she sure is working hard from the sidelines to shield her only grandson from disaster. But I do know where GangUk got his protective instincts from.

7. Watch it or drop it?

For now, I’m watching the kdrama. Is anybody else watching this?