(♀️, 43 years old) Hall Director of the Hosu Women’s University Dormitory
Just the clacking of her precise steps is enough to make the dorm residents scream, “Blood in the water!”* At the sound of those words, even dozing students are startled wide awake; she’s enough to make their knees wobble. Her expression is cold as a sheet of ice and she goes around in black floor-length skirts and a black collar even in the height of summer. The woman gives off a frightening air.
She’s a severely by-the-book type who’ll not make a single exception to the rules she’s established, so of course the students and even the telephone operator, Bun-ok, who she treats as an extension of herself, find her stifling.
The dorm is rife with rumors about this woman who seems like she wouldn’t bleed a single drop of blood if stabbed: That she always leaves for an unknown location on the last night of the month, or that the reason she closed off the 4th floor attic room that served as her predecessor, Hall Director Song’s, private quarters is because she had something to do with the woman’s suicide. She has an uncanny knack for picking out the students who utter such horrid rumours the next day and has them recite the Bible verse, “He who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens his lips wide will bring destruction,” so the mere sight of her is enough to strike them with horror...
A few notes on the above:
- Official sources like the OST track have the university as HOSU WOMANS UNIVERSITY, but I opted for a more grammatical translation. The front gate has the hanja for ‘Hosu’ as (好秀), as well as the year 1885. No such university actually exists, but I suspect it’s inspired by Ewha Womans University, founded in 1886.
- *Her surname, Pi (피), is a homophone for ‘blood’ so the phrase ‘Pi’s appeared!’ (피 떴다!) could also mean something like ‘blood in the water!’ Since Pi is not the most common of surnames, I’m sure the writer chose it entirely on purpose.
- I think this may have dropped out of the Disney+ subs entirely, but the students and Bun-ok often refer to her as ‘Pi-bada’ (피바다), meaning ‘sea of blood.’ If that doesn’t say everything... (Actress Yoon Se-ah, who plays her, was adorably enthused by this).
- In a similar vein (pun intended) to the English phrase ‘you can’t get blood out of a stone,’ in Korean, someone who is utterly unfeeling is said to have ‘neither blood nor tears’–or, like in the above description, to not bleed even when stabbed. Basically, her surname gets a lot of mileage.
- The description literally says she wears a muffler (머플러) even in the height of summer, but while I never saw her wearing one in the drama, she consistently wears high-collared blouses like the one in her picture, so I took the liberty of changing it here.
- Her call sign is ‘Rhine’ (라인강).
You can find the original Korean on JTBC’s official website here.
All source materials belong to the parties to which they are licensed. All translations are our own.