Ask: One of the most fascinating things for me is the prophecy the fortune-teller told Ji Ah when she gave him the fox bead. I feel like that’s important foreshadowing for the drama’s ending. How would you translate and interpret that?
n.b. Words/terms left in Korean require context and will be discussed below.EP06 The Four Pillars of Fate – Ji Ah Trades the Fox Bead
Ji Ah: I’ll repay this eunhye no matter what, please?
Fortune Teller: Okay, okay! You were a princess in your past life, do you think you’re a princess now? You think if you whine enough you can have anything. Ei! Your hand. Give me thine hand. (Ji Ah extends her right hand). Left hand!
Ji Ah: (changing hands) Left hand.
Fortune Teller: You were born with a very special saju weren’t you! Water and fire vie on par, earth is clouded, but metal will subdue it, so though darkness should surround you (lit. ‘all four directions, heaven and earth’), a moon rises in your sky.
Ji Ah: I’m not sure what you mean...?
Fortune Teller: You have the fox bead! For that is your moon.
Ji Ah: Excuse me?
Fortune Teller: Give to me the fox bead. Even without a moon, your saju is overflowing enough. Therefore...!
Ji Ah: I’ll give it to you! I don’t believe in such things as palja.
Fortune Teller: The deal...has been accepted.
Ji Ah: Pardon? Already?
Fortune Teller: Your palm lines. Your palm lines have changed.
n.b. I translated this working from the raw, so I haven’t seen the subs to be able to comment on them.
Eunhye (은혜)
Commonly translated as a ‘favor’ or ‘debt,’ ‘eunhye’ is distinct from both of these both linguistically and conceptually. When Yeon says that foxes are obligated to repay ‘debts,’ he’s actually talking about eunhye. ‘Debt’ is another word entirely (빚) and it does appear occasionally. The two are distinct. The glowing ring bonds formed between Yeon and Ah Eum, and Rang and Sajang are both manifestations of eunhye.
One Korean folktale in which eunhye features famously is the tale of The Grateful Magpies (은혜갚은 까치, literally: ‘the magpies who repaid their eunhye’). Shin Joo refers to this in EP02 when Yeon tells him about returning Ji Ah’s eyesight to her even after she tranquilized him:
Shin Joo: And you’re saying you just let her go? And returned her sight, too?
Yeon: Since rules are rules.
Shin Joo: It’s not as if we’re magpies meticulously repaying our eunhye! Geez, how long do we have to be bound by that sort of premodern contractual relationship?
Eunhye is difficult to translate but can be approximated as ‘help or favor (as in ‘to favor someone’) given willingly.’ In my mind, rather than a debt which is a negative concept, eunhye is more of a positive concept. There’s a voluntary, good faith/good will element to it. So you’re ‘indebted’ as the result of a good deed done for you. Except it’s not so voluntary if you’re a gumiho, apparently.
In contrast, when Yeon tells Eodukshini, ‘I’ll repay this debt shortly,’ in EP08 (could also be translated sarcastically as ‘I’ll return the favor shortly’), he uses the actual word for debt (빚) – no good will to be had here on either side.
Saju Palja (사주팔자）
Literally ‘four pillars eight characters’ (四柱八字), commonly translated as the ‘four pillars of destiny/fate.’ The concept comes from the Chinese astrological concept that a person’s destiny or fate can be divined by the two sexagenary cycle characters assigned to their birth year, month, day, and hour. For more on that, I’ll refer you to Wikipedia. ;)
In EP02, when Yeon asks Taluipa to look into whether Ji Ah’s parents are alive or dead, he has Ji Ah text him their saju (birth dates and times).
I’m not sure how palmistry fits in with the concept, and am no expert in astrology, western or eastern, so I can’t offer any interpretation of the fortune teller’s prophecy, but if anyone wants to try looking into it I’d be intrigued to hear what you find. Apparently, the writer spent 2.5 years on the script, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there’s actual meaning behind it.
The Fox Bead (여우 구슬)
Fox beads are a common earmark of gumiho lore in both Korea and Japan (and probably China, too, but I don’t know enough Chinese to speak to that). In most tellings I’ve encountered, a fox can’t live without their bead, but that doesn’t appear to be the case for Yeon. I was also intrigued by the following exchange he has with the Magistrate in EP06:
Yeon: That’s the Mirror of the Moon. Do you mean to harm (lit. ‘catch’) a human with one of the four great mountain gods’ four great treasures meant to protect all creation?
Magistrate: And so, did your fox bead protect all of creation? Or did it protect one person?
To my thinking, this implies that Yeon’s fox bead is being attributed to his status as a mountain god as much as it is to his being a fox. None of our other foxes seem to have one, but none of them are gumiho (gu = nine, ie. the number of tails), much less cheonho (heavenly foxes) like Yeon.
I’m actually a little unclear on this front as well. According to the excerpt from the Hyeonjoong’gi (玄中記) at the start of the first episode, foxes that live to be a hundred can take human form and foxes that live to be a thousand become cheonho. Shin Joo is obviously at least 600 years old but he doesn’t appear to be anywhere near Yeon’s caliber (or even Rang’s who is half human), something he says himself, and in the spin-off he only had one tail. Yoo Ri is younger still. It’s unclear to me whether they will ‘level up’ if they live long enough, or if they will never be as powerful as Yeon, regardless of how long they live. I get the sense it’s the latter. Both Yeon and Shin Joo have said that Yeon was of a different caliber from the very beginning (in EP02 and EP03, respectively).
Finally, we haven’t been told much about the fox bead’s powers other than emitting an aura only Yeon can see (sometimes) and suppressing Imoogi inside of Ji Ah. I’m hoping we see it again before the series wraps, but not convinced they’ll have time to recover it given everything else that needs to happen.
On another note, based on the preview for EP15, it appears that the Magistrate’s Mirror of the Moon will be coming back into play. My guess is that Imoogi is going to steal it from the Magistrate and use it on Taluipa. She was shown turned to stone in the background while Yeon and Terry-Imoogi fight. That’s originally her power, so I think Imoogi may use the mirror against her similarly to how the Magistrate ‘absorbed’ the sword Yeon sent flying at him and re-directed it at Ji Ah.
The Jeo Seung Shi Wang (저승 시왕)
The Ten Kings of the Afterlife (jeo-seung-shi-wang) [저승 시왕], as they’re known in the drama, are more commonly called the Ten Kings of the Underworld (myeong-bu-shi-wang) [명부 시왕・冥府十王]. In the subs they appear as the Afterlife Judges, which is accurate in that this is one of the key roles that they perform. As we’re told in EP13, the fortune teller is actually one of them.
Yeon: What’s the word? That fortune teller, did you find out about him?
Snail Bride: I’ve been asking around via our patrons.
Yeon: He didn’t seem to be just another low-level native (Korean) god. What’s the geezer’s deal?
Snail Bride: This seems like just a baseless rumour, but there was talk that one of the Ten Kings of the Afterlife who rule over hell leaves his position without notice at odd times.
Yeon: Heh...Interesting. In any case, relay any news you hear about that geezer to me as soon as you hear it.
While the Snail Bride seems to doubt the validity of the rumour, Yeon appears confident it’s true. He later relays this to Team Fox at their strategy meeting:
Yeon: Do you remember the fortune teller we met at the Korean Folk Village?
Ji Ah: Of course I remember! (Shooting Rang a dirty look) Because of someone [your] fox bead was stolen from us.
Rang: I heard rumour he’s a major big shot. Is it true?
Yeon: He’s one of the Ten Kings of Hell.
Rang: What?!
Yeon: They say he’s also in possession of the Uiryeong’geom (geom = sword).
Rang: No way~
Jae Hwan: What’s the Uiryeong’geom?
Shin Joo: It’s a sword that cuts evil (lit. ‘sins’).
Jae Hwan: Cuts...evil, you said?
Shin Joo: It’s sword they say was made in ancient days by King Yeomra himself from a branch he broke off of the Uiryeongsu (su = tree) that weighs sins. But, didn’t that disappear from the world several thousand years ago?
Yeon: (Shaking his head) Uh-uh. The Snail Bride just picked it up.
As you may recall, the Ten Kings are the ones who put a celestial hit on Rang which led Yeon to track him down and pretend to kill him (thanks for the angst), and they’re the ones who passed judgement on Yeon after he killed the mudang (shamanness) and sentenced him to time in the Snow Mountain Prison.
It appears that there was some confusion going around that the fortune teller is King Yeomra. Given the above dialogue, I can see where people may have understood his possession of the sword to indicate that, and, in truth, we don’t know which of the Ten Kings he is. That being said, I think if King Yeomra was frequently vacating his post without notice, someone would have said something. I also think Yeomra is a big enough name that if it were him they would’ve just come out and said so. Yeomra is also Taluipa’s brother so she, at least, would know. My assumption was that he was one of the other, less well known kings.
To conclude, this has all been a long way of saying that I have no idea what Ji Ah’s palja will mean for her fate. What I can provide is a little context. I’m not familiar with the sword, and it doesn’t turn up when I google it, so I suspect it was invented for the purpose of the show. Whether it remains a red herring until the end or shows up in the final hour remains to be seen.