(♀️, 24 years old) Telephone Operator at the Hosu Women’s University Dormitory
Her pent-up anger over the fact that she was forced to give up college–since she wouldn’t have been able to afford tuition even if she had been accepted–is coiling inside her like a snake.
Though money problems certainly make her lament her lot in life, they wouldn’t have been enough to make her this angry, but working at the Hosu Women’s University dormitory makes her anger surge again and again. ‘What’s the difference between them and me? Just that they were born to good parents, right? The world is so unfair, I wish someone would just upset the whole thing. Or a war would just break out!”
In a dorm that’s home to 360 female college students, there are exactly two phones. Answering phones for 13 hours straight from 8:00 in the morning to 9:00 at night is enough of a grind, but thanks to Hall Director Pi treating her like a maid, her stress level is reaching its peak. It’s because Hall Director Pi is so dismissive of her that the students call her by the nickname ‘Chicken Poop-house’* instead of by her name ‘Gye Bun-ok,’ making her insides boil more.
The only one she likes is Young-ro, the scholarship student who works part-time answering phones with her and calls her eonni without reservation. Walking around campus with the original English text of Romeo and Juliet (courtesy of Young-ro) in her arms made her feel as though she’d become an English Lit major. Perhaps that’s why she jumped in to join the group-date Young-ro’s room was invited on when they were one person short...
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 name, Gye Bun-ok, is written with the hanja (桂芬玉), where ‘Gye’ (桂) means ‘laurel,’ ‘Bun’ (芬) means ‘fragrant,’ and ‘Ok’ (玉) means ‘jade.’ However, ‘gye’ is also how you pronounce the hanja (鶏) ‘chicken,’ ‘bun’ is also the pronunciation for (糞) ‘poop,’ and ‘ok’ is also the pronunciation for (屋) ‘house.’ Translated into spoken Korean, this becomes ‘talk-ddong-jip’ (닭똥집), i.e. ‘chicken-poop-house.’ In the Disney+ subs this became ‘Gizzard.’
- Eonni literally means ‘older sister [to a girl]’ but it’s used more generally by younger girls on older girls they’re close with, or even sometimes as a polite-yet-friendly way to address a stranger who fits the right age bracket when you don’t know their name. In this case, Young-ro’s unhesitating use of the term is a sign of the girls’ closeness, as well as Young-ro’s warm nature. It can be used on its own or tacked on to a person’s given name (i.e. ‘Bun-ok eonni’).
- In modern parlance, a group date would be ‘sogae-ting’ (introduction + ting) but the word used here is ‘bang–ting’ (room + ting). This makes sense because it’s set up as a group date between the girls who share room 207 and the boys who stay at the Haedal Boarding House in Sillim-dong.
You can find the original Korean on JTBC’s official website here.
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