12 Things You May Have Missed In Episodes 5-8

The hit K-drama Love Next Door is filled with numerous Korean historical and cultural references as well as clever wordplay that might puzzle many viewers, but apparently that hasn’t prevented the show from enjoying ongoing popularity among international audiences. The series continues to be one of the most watched shows on Netflix, currently ranking No. 2 on the streamer’s weekly Global Top 10 list of non-English shows (it’s worth noting that the top spot is occupied by another Korean show, the reality cooking competition Culinary Class Wars).

Below I’ve attempted to provide some additional context around some of the cultural references found in Episodes 5-8. (To be honest, I wasn’t sure whether to write such explainers for the entire series since it’s difficult and time-consuming to put together a piece like this—which includes trying to pull half-decent screenshots where the actors aren’t caught in an awkward frame. But due to the overwhelming response I received on my previous article on Episodes 1-4, I’ll upload similar pieces for the rest of the series, though it might take a while.)

Forbes‘Love Next Door’: 15 Things You May Have Missed In Episodes 1-4By Regina Kim

Of course, the explanations below will only do so much, as part of the show’s humor and overall appeal lies in the way the characters verbally interact with each other—e.g., their intonation, the way that Seok-ryu and Seung-hyo play off each other when they engage in witty banter—these are all things that cannot be easily conveyed via subtitles. Jung So-min, for example, is particularly brilliant in delivering her lines as Seok-ryu. Oftentimes how she says something is just as important as what she says, but subtitles obviously won’t be able to capture many of these nuances.

Love Next Door has also been praised for its ingenious wordplay sprinkled in throughout the series—much of which inevitably gets lost in translation, unfortunately—but international audiences can get a glimpse of this by closely paying attention to how the episode titles change at the end of every episode to reflect the evolution the main characters have undergone. I didn’t explain these transitions previously because I assumed viewers would figure them out based on the animations and subtitles, but I’m including an example below just in case:

At the end of Episode 2, the Korean word for “hate” (미움, pronounced like “mee-oom”) is traced against the night sky like a constellation. Then a couple of lines in the word are re-traced to spell out the word 마음 (pronounced like “mah-eum”), which in this case means “having feelings for someone.” So with a simple stroke of animation, the scene can be interpreted to mean “hate turns to love” (note that the Korean letters in the second image also somewhat resemble holding hands).

Anyway, without further ado, here’s a list of 12 things that viewers might have missed while watching Episodes 5-8 of Love Next Door.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead!

Episode 5: Go Back

1. Many viewers have asked why Seok-ryu often addresses Seung-hyo as “Choi-sseung” (최씅) instead of by his first name. According to Seolran Won, a PR manager at Studio Dragon (which co-produced the show), “Choi-sseung” is simply a nickname that Seok-ryu uses for Seung-hyo, and the show’s writer Shin Ha-eun didn’t intend for it to have any particular meaning.

That said, many young kids in South Korea don’t address kids of the opposite gender by their first name because it can feel a bit embarrassing to do so at that age, Won points out. (For instance, if a girl in elementary or middle school calls a male classmate by his first name, other kids around them might think the two are very close and perhaps even like each other.) Instead, a young girl will often call a boy by his full name or a nickname (and vice versa).

In Seok-ryu’s case, it’s likely that the nickname she used for Seung-hyo just kind of stuck.

2. While at Namsan Tower, Seung-hyo and Seok-ryu hear the news that Atelier In has been commissioned to build Greip’s new flagship store. Seok-ryu decides to cook a meal to celebrate, so they buy groceries. Seung-hyo asks why they didn’t just eat pork cutlets in Namsan.

The area around Namsan Tower in Seoul is known for having tons of restaurants selling donkatsu (돈가스 or 돈까스), or Japanese-style fried pork cutlet. Donkatsu eateries began cropping up in Namsan, especially along Sopa-ro Road, in the 1990s when the hearty dish became popular among taxi drivers shuttling passengers to and from the area.

Both tourists and locals flocked to Namsan last year to eat donkatsu after watching Disney+’s hit K-drama Moving, which featured the item in over half of its episodes.

3. Many K-drama fans will have noticed this as a cute reference to the 2018 romantic K-drama Something in the Rain, which Jung Hae-in himself starred in alongside actress Son Ye-jin. The Korean title for that show is , which translates to “Pretty Noona Who Buys Me Food” (“noona” is a term Korean men use to refer to an older sister or a woman who’s older than them). Here Seok-ryu puts her own clever spin on the title by saying, “I’ll show you a pretty noona who cooks you food,” to which Seung-hyo responds by saying, “Don’t mess with Son Ye-jin” (Son played the “pretty noona” in Something in the Rain).

4. The word 출가 (pronounced “chool-ga”), which Mo-eum’s mother Jae-sook has written on her “prayer tile,” has multiple definitions. For example, it can refer to the act of renouncing the material world (i.e., “moving out” of secular society) to become a Buddhist monk, or it can signify a woman getting married (i.e., moving out of one’s home to live with one’s husband). At first Jae-sook’s friend In-sook mistakenly believes Jae-sook wants her daughter to become a monk, when Jae-sook clearly meant the latter.

5. Seung-hyo’s ex-girlfriend Jang Tae-hui (Seo Ji-hye) is an artisan who specializes in onggi. Onggi (옹기) is an umbrella term for earthenware pottery used in Korea. Some types of onggi, including dok (독) and hang-ari (항아리), are used for fermenting and storing foods like kimchi (김치); doenjang (된장, pronounced kind of like “dwen-jahng”), Korean soybean paste that’s similar to Japanese miso; gochujang (고추장), or red pepper paste; and soy sauce (간장 – “gahn-jang”). The porous nature of the earthenware material allows air to pass through freely, enabling the contents to ripen without spoiling.

6. When Tae-hui suddenly shows up at Seung-hyo’s office, one of his employees, Na-yun (played by Shim So-young), sarcastically asks Seok-ryu if Seung-hyo and Tae-hui are filming Architecture 101. Architecture 101 is a 2012 romantic film starring many familiar names like Uhm Tae-woong, Han Ga-in, Lee Je-hoon, Bae Suzy, Jo Jung-suk and Yoo Yeon-seok. In the movie, Uhm plays an architect named Seung-min who suddenly receives a commission from his former college classmate and first love Seo-yeon (played by Han) to redesign her family home. As the two spend more time together, they begin rekindling their feelings for each other, which upsets Seung-min’s fiancée.

Seems like Na-yun picked the perfect movie analogy here.

Architecture 101 enjoyed unexpected box office success and catapulted both Jo Jung-suk and Bae Suzy to cinema superstardom. It was Suzy’s big screen debut and earned her the nickname “the nation’s first love.” Prior to the movie, Jo Jung-suk was primarily a musical actor, but after winning a number of awards for his role as Seung-min’s best friend during college, Jo began appearing in a number of films and K-dramas.

7. Seok-ryu and Seung-hyo visit Tae-hui’s pottery studio, where Tae-hui also makes Korean condiments with the help of her neighbors. Seok-ryu spots piles of meju (메주), or dried blocks of crushed soybeans that are used to make sauces and pastes like doenjang, gochujang, soy sauce and more. Bricks of meju are made by washing, boiling and crushing soybeans and then pressing them into rectangular cubes, which are then left to air-dry and ferment. The meju slabs are put inside onggi jars like dok and hang-ari and further fermented in salt water. The liquid mixture arising from the fermentation process becomes soy sauce, while the solid part is used to make pastes like doenjang.

Due to the difficult and time-consuming nature of the process (the condiments usually take around six months to make!) and the very strong odor emitted by meju, most Koreans nowadays just buy these sauces and pastes from their local supermarkets.

8. At the end of Episode 5, the subtitles say, “GO BACK TO YOU.” However, the Korean words shown on screen—고백 (“goh-baek”)—sound similar to “go back” but actually mean “confession”—as in, Seung-hyo confessing that he has feelings for Seok-ryu.

Episode 6: Your First

9. In this scene Mo-eum’s mother Jae-sook is shown hanging a poster of Lee Chan-won in her office, much to the excitement of her friends Mi-sook and In-sook. Seung-hyo’s mother Hye-sook, however, doesn’t know who he is because she has spent much of her time overseas.

Lee Chan-won is a famous trot singer and TV personality in Korea who shot to fame after appearing on the popular televised singing competition Mr. Trot in 2020, where he finished in third place. He captivated the nation with his rendition of the Korean trot song “진또배기” (jin-tto-baegi) and even came to be nicknamed “찬또배기” (chan-tto-baegi), a combination of his name and the song’s title.

For those who are curious, jin-tto-baegi is apparently a word used in Korea’s Gangwon Province to refer to a type of sotdae (솟대), a wooden pole erected at an entrance to a village to chase away evil spirits and bring a good harvest, according to Korean folk traditions. A jin-tto-baegi has three wooden geese sitting on top of the pole that are believed to ward off disasters caused by water, fire and wind.

10. In cooking class Seok-ryu learns to make jijim nureumjeok (지짐누름적), a type of dish made by skewering together slices of seasoned meat, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, balloon flower root and/or other vegetables and coating them in flour and egg before frying them in a griddle or frying pan. The skewers are removed before serving.

Episode 7: Love Is All About Timing

(Note: I didn’t think there were any scenes from Episode 7 that needed additional context, but if there’s anything you’d like explained from that episode, please feel free to let me know by leaving a comment on this article or reaching out to me on social media, and I might add it to this article later.)

Episode 8: His Secret

11. In this scene Seok-ryu returns Seung-hyo’s tie, saying she has removed all the blood stains (he had previously used it to stop her nosebleed). He responds by saying that he wishes the blood hadn’t come out. Seok-ryu then asks if he wishes his tie were ruined so that he could tell her to compensate him by buying him a more expensive one. Seung-hyo jokingly replies it’s so that he can be buried while wearing the blood-stained tie, and—according to the English subtitles—adds, “It would’ve looked pretty nice.” Here he’s alluding to the 1979 film Sonagi, or The Shower, which is based on a famous Korean short story of the same name by Hwang Sun-won. What Seung-hyo says here in Korean could be loosely interpreted as, “That would be a pretty clever idea.”

Seok-ryu instantly recognizes the movie reference and responds by saying, “You crazy guy! Are you filming Sonagi or what?” (Though the English subtitles say, “Are you insane? Do you think you’re in some melodrama or something?”)

The plot of Sonagi centers on a boy and a girl who become fast friends and develop feelings for each other. One day they get caught in the rain while playing outside, and the girl becomes ill. She later shows him the dress she wore that rainy day, telling him it got stained while they were crossing a stream together. The girl never recovers from her illness, and one day the boy overhears his father saying that the girl has died. He hears his father tell his mother, “The girl was a very clever child. Before she died, she asked to be buried in the same clothes she was wearing [that day it rained].”

Sonagi—especially its rain scene—has served as a source of inspiration for various Korean films and K-dramas over the years. The iconic romcom flick My Sassy Girl, directed by Kwak Jae-yong, features a hilarious parody of Sonagi:

The rain scenes in The Classic, another famous romantic film that’s also directed by Kwak, are also thought to have been inspired by Sonagi:

The Classic’s rain scene with Son Ye-jin and Zo In-sung, in turn, inspired the below scene from the popular K-drama What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim:

12. Some of the show’s funniest scenes involve Seung-hyo’s father Gyeong-jong and Seok-ryu’s father Geun-sik getting drunk. Gyeong-jong repeats the Korean word for lily-of-the-valley (은방울, pronounced like “eun-bahng-ool”) over and over again, and Geun-sik mistakenly believes he’s referring to the famous singing duo Eunbangul Sisters (은방울 자매), aka the Silver Bell Sisters. (Note that the Korean term for lily-of-the-valley literally means “silver bells” because of the flowers’ appearance.) Geun-sik then starts singing “Mapo Terminal,” one of the best-known songs by the Eunbangul Sisters.