“Aigooo~ I exerted myself for nothing. People who are going to meet will meet somehow, even if you just let them be.” ~ Halmeom (JBL)
Yeon・En (연・縁)
If you’ve been perusing this site, you may have encountered the terms in’yeon or agyeon, which crop up from time to time–often enough that it seemed worth writing a post about it. The concept of ‘yeon’ (Korean) or ‘en’ (Japanese) gets translated a number of ways, depending upon the context in which it appears, but in essence it means ‘fate; connection; affinity.’ Not so much fate in the sense of ‘greater destiny,’ but rather the fated connection between two people, or between a person and a place, object, circumstance, etc. It’s inherently relational and, while it can refer to an isolated incident (e.g. a brief encounter with someone that changes the course of your life), more often it’s used when someone crosses paths with another person or thing a number of times and what was regarded as chance begins to feel consequential.
In JBL, Halmeom sums this up neatly when she runs into Moon-soo a second time at the hospital:
Halmeom: Fancy meeting you here! I was actually wondering how I’d meet you again, regretting and regretting I hadn’t taken down your phone number or something. (…) Meeting again like this without having been in contact, this is true in’yeon!
~ Rain or Shine EP08
Variants of the character include: (緑 – modern) (緣 – traditional ) (缘 – simplified)
In’yeon・Innen (인연・因縁)
As in the above quote, if the nature of the connection is positive, or even neutral, it’s generally referred to as ‘in’yeon’ in Korean, where the additional hanja, ‘in’ (因), carries the meaning of ‘cause; reason; to follow or be based on.’
By contrast, in Japanese, it’s more common to just use ‘en’ on its own, as in the phrase, ‘en ga aru’ (縁がある) meaning ‘to have en [with someone/something].’
It’s sometimes said that if you cross paths with someone three times by chance, you have in’yeon・en with them. This comes up in the TotNT EP01 dialogue:
Ji-ah: Whether it’s chance or in’yeon, I’ve seen you [as many as] three times. The first time was at the wedding hall where a bride suddenly disappeared, the second time on bus 1002, and the third was at this hospital where I’ve come to find the accident victim.
~ Tale of the Nine Tailed EP01
Yeon: Let’s say that it is in’yeon. But, regrettably, I have a sweetheart. And, moreover-contrary to how I look-I’m the devoted type.
Yeon is being intentionally obtuse (or perhaps cheeky) here, pretending to think Ji-ah is interested in him romantically when he knows that, really, she considers him a suspect in the incident(s) she’s investigating. The term can be used in the sense of meeting a potential match, but it certainly isn’t limited to that context.
As mentioned above, one can also have in’yeon with something that isn’t a person. There’s an example of this in TotNT EP02. When Yeon and Ji-ah go to question the tree spirit about Eohwa Island, she makes the following observation:
Tree Spirit: I see you have in’yeon with my forest, agasshi.
~ Tale of the Nine Tailed EP02
Ji-ah: This is my first time here, though?
Tree Spirit: Go to the north end of the island. Your first answer will be there.
This turns out to be true, as they discover when Ji-ah recognises Jangsan Cave from the old photo of her parents:
Ji-ah: I feel like I’ve seen this scene somewhere. (pulls out the photo and holds it up to compare) It was here. This photo was taken here.
~ Tale of the Nine Tailed EP02
Yeon: So you did have in’yeon [with this place].
Ji-ah: She said it was not long after she conceived me. I was here, too. Inside my mom’s belly.
Hence, since Ji-ah has been to the island twice now (once when she wasn’t even aware of it), she might be said to have in’yeon with the place. In fact, as the backstory collection reveals, her in’yeon with the island extends back into her past life as Ah-eum...though Ji-ah doesn’t know that.
Agyeon・Akuen (악연・悪縁)
The counterpart to in’yeon・innen is agyeon・akuen, where the character (悪) means ‘bad; evil; hate.’ Technically, in Korean, this is ak’yeon but–due to assimilation–it’s pronounced ‘agyeon.’ As you might expect, agyeon・akuen is a fated connection that is unwelcome or detrimental in nature.
Taluipa’s character description states that “She has a particular in’yeon – or perhaps agyeon – with Lee Yeon, and occasionally acts as his sounding board.” The implication, of course, being that it’s uncertain whether their connection is positive or negative in nature.
By contrast, Yeon’s connection to Imoogi is plainly negative, since they’re essentially mortal enemies. Imoogi says as much when he first appears in TotNT EP03:
Imoogi: You should have let me go. Our agyeon ought to have ended. If only you hadn’t stopped the boat crossing the Samdocheon, that is.
n.b. Since Ah-eum essentially ended her own life while possessed by Imoogi, both would have been ineligible for reincarnation (according to the laws of TotNT), thereby permanently severing all three of their yeon.. ..had Yeon not interfered. ~ Tale of the Nine Tailed EP03
In the fan subs, this became ‘our ill-fated relationship,’ which makes them sound like star-crossed lovers instead of sworn foes since ‘ill-fated’ carries the connotation of ‘doomed; tragic’ in English. By contrast, ‘agyeon’ has more to do with how the connection plays out in each person’s life–for good or ill. To that point, both parties involved can classify their yeon differently. What is in’yeon to one person might be agyeon to the other, and vice versa.
The Japanese analogue would be ‘akuen’ (悪縁・惡緣), but the more commonly used phrase is ‘kusare en’ (腐れ縁), meaning ‘rotten en.’ If anyone’s seen Psycho-pass, this is how Ginoza refers to his relationship with Kougami in SS1, which will make sense if you’re familiar with the story. I won’t go into it here because it’s complicated and I think the phrase rather speaks for itself.
Kushiki Enishi (奇しき縁)
In Japan, there’s also the concept of ‘kushiki enishi’ which is something like a strange, mysterious, or even ironic fated connection. One that is not precisely good or bad but rather unexpected in some way. ‘Enishi’ is an alternate reading of the kanji (縁), but I won’t be opening that particular can of worms in this post.
Other ‘Fates’
Unmyeong・Unmei (운명・運命)
Unlike yeon・en, which is inherently relational, unmyeong・unmei is fate in the broader sense of ‘destiny,’ as we tend to think of it in English. For instance, the blurb on the Fortune Teller states that, “In order to regain Lee Yeon, Ji-ah hands over the fox bead and her unmyeong changes.” Her saju-palja (see below) don’t change but, because the fox bead was suppressing the part of Imoogi inside of her, by relinquishing it, the broader arc of her fate changes.
Unmyeong・unmei can also be scaled up in a way many of the other concepts of fate discussed here can’t. To use an example from a show not covered on this site, in EP02 of Mr. Sunshine (2018) the heroine has an exchange with her grandfather about the state of Joseon leading up to the Japanese occupation (1910-1945):
Ae-shin: Be it China, France, or Germany, they’re all jockeying to be the first [to gain a foothold] in Joseon. The foreigners even make off with our rice. The unmyeong of Joseon is in this state-
n.b. Since her father and uncle both died as rebel fighters. ~ Mr. Sunshine EP02
Sa-hong: This is why I am forbidding you. Because you’re like this! Does this nation not have a king? Are there no ministers in the Royal Court? No, even if there were neither king nor court, you can’t be [the one to fight this]. I’m saying this household has already lost your father and uncle to concerns over the unmyeong of Joseon–that is enough!
So here, the word is being used to describe the fate of a nation, as opposed to that of an individual. The same principle applies to the Japanese analogue unmei.
That being said, there is some conceptual overlap with yeon・en when it comes to unmyeong・unmei vis-à-vis certain people, places, etc. For example, in Snowdrop, Young-ro records her thoughts after having run into Soo-ho twice in the same same day and falling for him hard:
Young-ro: Ah, how is it I happened to run into him right then? What if I looked like an idiot? It’s okay, Eun Young-ro. It’s embarrassing, but.. since you met him again... I thought my heart would–bang!–just burst. Is this what you call a fated* love?
[*unmyeong-jeogin (운명적인) = fated; fateful]
~ Snowdrop EP11
Again, this can apply to something like a place, as well:
Kang-doo: The place where the shopping mall was, do you know they’ve started construction there again?
n.b. Since he was trapped in the rubble when the shopping mall that once stood there collapsed. ~ Rain or Shine EP03
Halmeom: How could I not? You know how much the price of land went up thanks to that crap?
Kang-doo: I’m working there. Just...coincidentally.
Halmeom: Coincidentally my foot. What, is that the only place you could work? Crazy bastard. Why would you make a point of going there?
Kang-doo: Guess it’s unmyeong, then.
Conceptually, this is the difference between being fated to go to a place and having a fateful connection with a place. Whether one term or the other gets used ultimately depends on how the speaker is thinking about it.
Saju-Palja・Shichuu-Suimei (사주팔자・四柱八字・四柱推命)
Saju-palja (also sometimes written with the more traditional 四株八字) literally means ‘four pillars, eight characters’ and is commonly translated as the ‘the four pillars of fate.’ Azeria touched on this briefly in a previous Ask, but I’ll attempt to explain in a bit more detail here.
The concept has its roots in Chinese astrology and the belief that a person’s fate can be divined from the two sexagenary cycle (12 zodiac animals x 5 elements = 60) hanja assigned to their birth year, month, day, and hour. Each of those four time denominations is considered a ‘pillar’ and is assigned one of the ten Celestial Stems (十天干) and one of the twelve Terrestrial Branches (十二地支), giving you eight hanja in total. Thus, (celestial stem + terrestrial branch) x (year + month + day + hour) = 8 characters.
The practice exists in Japan, as well, though they use different kanji to describe the concept: 四柱推命 (‘four-pillar-infer-fate’), i.e. the four pillars from which one can divine one’s fate.
I won’t claim to understand the details of how this works; supposedly it takes years of study to be able to parse and interpret these with any facility. But this is the information Yeon asks Ji-ah to send him in TotNT EP02 to determine if her parents are alive or dead:
Ji-ah: My parents’ saju? Okay, I’ll text them to you.
n.b. Hour of the Rat: 23:00-1:00 | Hour of the Snake: 13:00-15:00 ~ Tale of the Nine Tailed EP02
Dad: Nam Jong Soo | born 3 May 1958 | Year of the Dog | Hour of the Rat
Mom: Lee Young Seon | born 26 June 1960 | Year of the Rat | Hour of the Snake
Most of the West is familiar with the twelve Chinese Zodiac animals as they apply to a twelve year cycle, but what you may not have known is that each animal also represents a two hour period within each day, since 12 zodiac x 2 hours = 24 hours. If you read novels (or watch dramas) set in the pre-modern period in Korea or Japan, people will often tell time this way. For that matter, when the Fortune Teller instructs Ji-ah to return by a certain time with an object to exchange for Yeon, he tells her, “If you don’t return by the hour of the dragon,* the deal is off.” EP04 also mentions the Hour of the Ox (축시・丑の刻参り), but that’s a whole different post.
*n.b. I think this may have been a mistake, as it’s clearly night but the hour of the dragon is actually 07:00-09:00AM.Though the full phrase is ‘saju-palja,’ people will often use either the first part or the second to refer to the concept as a whole (since the 4 pillars consist of 8 characters), as you can see in this bit of dialogue from TotNT EP06:
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, a moon rises in your sky.
~ Tale of the Nine Tailed EP06
Ji-ah: I’m not sure what you mean...?
Fortune Teller: You have the fox bead! For that is your moon.
Ji-ah: Pardon?
Fortune Teller: Give the fox bead unto me. Even without a moon, your saju are sufficiently overflowing. Therefore...!
Ji-ah: I’ll give it to you! I don’t believe in things like palja.
I’m not going to attempt to interpret that prophecy, since Ji-ah’s guess is as good as mine, but I don’t doubt that it has meaning; Han Woo-ri apparently spent 2.5 years writing the script and clearly did her research. The main take away re: this post is that saju-palja is one’s fate as determined by one’s time of birth–what’s known as natal astrology.
It’s easy to pull examples from a show like TotNT, whose central conceit revolves around gods and monsters and fate, but the word(s) saju-palja gets used in much more mundane contexts, as well, to essentially mean ‘one’s lot in life.’ There’s an example in the dialogue of EP15 of Rain and Shine:
Moon-soo: Mom...I’m not going to date anymore.
~ Rain or Shine EP15
Yoon Ok: Why? Were you dumped? Who’s he to dump you?
Moon-soo: I wish that was it. I’d feel better if he had just flat-out dumped me...It seems like my palja may be to wreck other people’s lives.
This exchange happens after Moon-soo learns that she and Kang-doo were trapped together in the S-Mall collapse when they were kids and blames herself for the turn his life has taken since (because she was rescued first). Really, though, she’s just moping.
There’s also an adage in Korean that involves the word: ‘geokjeong-do palja-da’ (걱정도 팔자다), which literally means, ‘Worry is also [one’s] palja,’ but amounts to ‘don’t borrow trouble.’ That is, let the people whom a matter concerns worry about it (since it’s their palja) and mind your own business.
Pilyeon・Hitsuzen (필연・必然)
The Japanese concept of hitsuzen is often translated as ‘inevitability’–the photonegative of fate, if you will. This is the idea that what happens was always going to be, or perhaps–somewhen–already is. It’s the exclusion of all other possibilities, as opposed to the supremacy of one.
For anyone familiar with time theory, I’d argue this is conceptually related to the ‘block time’ or ‘block universe’ perspective, in which all points in time exist simultaneously. This is also sometimes called the Tralfamadorian perspective or, as Huw Price put it, ‘the view from nowhen’–i.e. from outside of time. To conceptualize, you can imagine the whole of spacetime as a published book, wherein all points of the story exist equally and simultaneously. Hence, even if nothing is ‘fated,’ no matter what page you open to, the story is always going to end the same.
The Korean analogue is ‘pilyeon,’ though I’ve not heard it used as often as hitsuzen is in Japanese.
The Red Thread of Fate (운명의 붉은 실・運命の赤い糸)
In Eastern folklore (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc.) there’s a conception that fated partners are bound by an invisible red thread of fate that can tangle or stretch, but never break. Traditional Chinese lore depicts the thread as being tied to each person’s ankle, while Japanese tales claim the thread is tied to the man’s thumb and the woman’s little finger. This is why, in Japan, raising one’s little finger is a way of saying ‘girlfriend’ and raising one’s thumb is a way of saying ‘boyfriend’ without actually using the word (like throwing up an ‘okay’ sign). These days, it’s common across cultures to depict the thread as being tied to both partners’ little fingers.
There’s a Korean folktale called Blue Thread, Red Thread (청실홍실), which tells the tale of a man who watches an old woman matchmaking couples with blue and red thread and, in an effort to defy fate, attempts to kill his destined spouse, only to end up marrying her anyway some years later. The story is almost certainly based on Chinese tales of Yuè Lǎo (月老), the old lunar matchmaker god, and features many of the same plot points and motifs.
The concept of the ‘red thread of fate’ is likely what inspired the bit about Mitsuha’s red hair ribbon in Shinkai Makoto’s Your Name (君の名は。). Even the name of the town where Mitsuha lives–Itomori (糸守)–has the kanji for ‘thread’ (糸) in it. Since the movie came out seven years ago now, I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to mention the two protagonists are actually separated by time as well as space, since Mitsuha is living in 2013 and Taki in 2016. Still, in the end, the two meet.
This is also the probable inspiration for the bit in TotNT EP09, when Shin-joo asks for a way to save Yeon and Ji-ah from Eodukshini and Taluipa gives him a red rope to bind Yeon and Ji-ah’s wrists together, thereby bridging their subconsciouses (the above image).
That being said, in Korean, the phrase ‘cheonsaeng yeonbun’ (천생연분・天生緣分) is more commonly used (and, in fact, if you plug 運命の赤い糸 into the Naver Japanese-Korean dictionary, it gives you 천생연분 instead of the more literal translation). This phrase appears in the TotNT EP11 dialogue when Yeon takes Ji-ah to the Afterlife Immigration Office to meet Taluipa and Hyeonuiong.
Taluipa: You two are exactly alike.
~ Tale of the Nine Tailed EP11
Yeon: Yup. We’re cheonsaeng yeonbun.
‘Cheonsaeng yeonbun’ gets translated a number of ways: ‘meant for each other,’ ‘made for each other,’ ‘a match made in heaven,’ ‘a perfect match,’ ‘the love of a lifetime,’ and so on and so forth, and is similar to the Western concept of soulmates–one’s destined match.
Additional Terms:
- myeong’un・meiun (명운・命運) – largely synonymous with unmyeong・unmei
- sugmyeong・shukumei (숙명・宿命) – one’s fated lot; conceptually similar to saju-palja, but not related to the time of one’s birth; it connotes a task/role one is born into the world to fulfill–often a burden, but not necessarily bad
- seongsu・seishuku (성수・星宿) – one’s stars
- cheonjeong・sadame (천정・定め) – one’s ordained fate
- cheonmyeong・tenmei (천명・天命) – the will of the gods [re: a person]; Providence
- ingwayul・ingaritsu (인과율・因果律) – the principle of causality, simliar to the Buddhist concepts of hetu (हेतु) and prataya (प्रत्यय), i.e. direct causes and indirect conditions which underlie the actions of all things
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