Go Hye-ryeong [Jung Shin-hye] (♀️, 23 years old, born Go Hye-ja) Senior in the HSWU Vocal Music Dept.
She’s showy enough to be called ‘HSWU’s Maria Callas,’ sexy, and so charismatic she’s already nabbed victories at a variety of concours and even has a TV appearance under her belt; she’s the biggest college-age star in town. The dormitory postbox is crammed full to bursting with love letters to her. Everyone believes beyond a doubt she’ll become a world-class prima donna.
She loathes patriarchal worldviews and androcentric thinking. She rejects tradition and she’s, shall we say, a proponent of free love whose heart only races for ‘The Funk.’* Thanks to this, she goes around carrying on flirtations with countless men but doesn’t give a damn. Dirty rumours? Never mind!
[see notes]
Yeo Jeong-min [Kim Mi-soo] (♀️, 23 years old) Senior in the HSWU History Dept.
Amidst the girly, flashy female college students, she wears a tracksuit and black horn-rimmed glasses and shuffles around in tri-colour scuffs all year round; she goes by ‘state exam prep student.’ In reality, she does regularly spend the night in the dormitory reading room. The problem is that, in fact, she’s not studying for her history major or preparing for the state exam but reading banned books for her undercircle seminars.
As someone striving to create a better world, in her eyes, Seol-hee, who just wants to make a good marriage, and Hye-ryeong, who’s always making a fuss under the pretense of being a proponent of free love, are almost pathetic. Upon learning that ‘daughter of the rice-cake shop’ Young-ro’s older brother was forcibly conscripted for protesting, she’s come to look after Young-ro with staunch affection.
[see notes]
Yoon Seol-hee [Choi Hee-jin] (♀️, 20 years old) Freshman in the HSWU Household Management Dept.
She’s known as ‘the chaebeol’s daughter’ because on the first day she moved into the dorm she arrived in a foreign-made luxury car and everything she uses–her clothes, her shoes, her blankets–is all brand-name. Yet somehow, she only has one goal in life: to marry well and be addressed as ‘madam.’ For that reason, she chose HSWU’s Household Management Department. Even though she’s a ‘sly’ realist who began going on group blind dates with KMA cadets, law students, and med students as soon as she enrolled, since she’s terrified of being hated by others, she’s timidity incarnate.
[see notes]
Choi Byeong-tae [An Dong-gu] (♂, 23 years old) Hye-ryeong’s beau, Military Academy Cadet
Though he boasted that he was armed with an impeccable appearance–from his crisp slacks and glossy combat boots to his pressed uniform and precise military gait–and a soldier’s spirit, he doesn’t do well in actual combat. He’s well versed in various military theories, as well as flight training and guerrilla tactics, and will soon be commissioned, but even he can’t believe what a chicken he is! How embarrassing!! Nevertheless, as befitting a man in uniform, appearance is everything to him. He’s a master of rationalisation who utilises every military theory to formulate strategies verbally yet insists that, because he’s a commander, he cannot be the one to put them into action.
Kim Man-dong [Kim Jong-soo] (♂, 67 years old) HSWU Dormitory Facility Manager
He lives with high blood-pressure, diabetes, and arthritis. He even suffers from glaucoma as a side effect of his arthritis and finds it a bother to put three to four drops of medicine in his eyes every evening and take his medications regularly. Everything is such a bother...grumble grumble grumble. Because he’s so sluggish, those who seek him out to ask him to mend things for them end up grumbling right along with him, but he sits in his room on sub-level 2 with a lamp on and fixes everything the kids ask him to–broken watches, portable cassette players, you name it. He’s a grandpa who can outdo MacGyver. His nickname is ‘HalGyver.’*
[see notes]
Oh Deok-shim [Nam Mi-jeong] (♀️, 58 years old) HSWU Dormitory Cafeteria Lady
Warm and amply attentive, she’s like a mother to the dorm students. When the grim reaper-like Hall Director Pi leaves the dorm like clockwork once a month, Deok-shim makes sure to have a glass of alcohol and something to snack on ready for when she returns. Just having her around is reassuring, but what on earth could have happened to her during the Korean War? When under extreme stress, her war trauma manifests, making her like a ticking timebomb...
[see notes]
Kim Sang-beom [Kim Jeong-hoon] (♂, 32 years old) Kim Man-dong’s son, Gang Henchman
He’s chock-full of dissatisfaction with the world. The fact that he’s still acting as an underling in some gang at this age is entirely his father’s fault. The fact that he gets knocked around if he rubs one of the enforcers younger than he is the wrong way is also all his father’s fault. In any case, anything that doesn’t go his way is his father’s fault. When his father, who left to earn money in the Middle East when he was five, showed up again twenty years later and asked after his dead mother, he had to laugh.
Other:
Eun Young-woo [Song Geon-hui]: Young-ro’s beloved and doting older brother. Despite their father’s occupation, he was uncommonly active in the student demonstrations. When he was caught protesting, his father forced him into military service. At the start of the drama, he’s a Navy administrative clerk stationed on Udo, off the coast of Jeju Island. According to the script, he’s 23-years-old.
Maternal Grandmother [unbilled]: From the time Young-ro was ten, she and her brother were raised by their maternal grandmother in the countryside following their father’s remarriage.
Shin Gyeong-ja [Jung Yi-seo]: The dormitory student rep who obsessively studies in the reading room until 2:00 AM every night. Jeong-min refers to her as ‘the person with the most sensitive nerves’ of anyone in the dorm. This is a play on her name since ‘nerves’ are ‘shingyeong’ (신경) in Korean. She can sometimes be found sleepwalking the halls at night reciting legal clauses. According to the script, she’s a third year law student.
Kim Dong-ji [unbilled]: The student in the Nursing Department called upon to assist Cheong-ya. Her name, oddly enough, is a homophone for the more respectful of the terms the Northerners use for ‘comrade’ (동지).
Song Hee-joo [Yeom Jung-ah]: The previous HSWU dormitory hall director, rumoured to have committed suicide six years prior to the start of the drama. The 4th floor attic room used to be her private quarters.
A few notes on the above:
- Though not listed in her official profile, Hye-ryeong’s birth name is revealed to be Go Hye-ja, which has a more dated sound to it. Though Hye-ryeong has legally changed her name, Jeong-min and Bun-ok will still call her this when they want to knock her down a peg.
- HSWU = Hosu Women’s University. Official sources like the OST track have it 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.
- Maria Callas, for those not familiar with her, was one of the most acclaimed opera singers of the 20th century–to the extent that she was hailed as La Divina (‘the Divine one’). So, though her character description isn’t all that clear about it, she’s being praised as a singer, not just for her looks.
- *Honestly, I struggled with how to translate this. In Hye-ryeong’s profile it states that ‘her heart only races for pagyeok (파격),’ where ‘pagyeok’ can mean ‘breaking rules, irregularity, exceptional, breakaway,’ but it’s also the word for ‘funk’ as in, ‘funk art,’ ‘funky jazz,’ etc. Since she’s all about disco and flouting convention, it could really be any of the above, but since it’s 1987 and the word’s in quotes, I went with ‘The Funk.’
- ‘Never mind!’ here is actually in English (네버 마인드!). The use of English makes her sound hip and modern, similar to the way the Three Wives pepper their speech with English and French when they’re putting on airs. This something of a counterpoint to her saturi (regional dialect).
- It’s not mentioned here, but ‘Anyway’ (애니웨이)–again in English–is practically Hye-ryeong’s catch phrase; she often uses it as a conversation opener or segue the way the Korean phrase ‘keuneo-jeoneo’ (그너저너) might be used. Since it doesn’t quite make sense in English (and would have used up precious characters) this dropped out of the Disney+ subs entirely.
- If you Google Image search 삼색 슬리퍼 (i.e. Jeong-min’s ‘tri-coloured scuffs’) you might recognise them immediately. These are practically the OG Crocs of Korea: plain, fashion faux pas slip-on shoes everyone owns that tacitly state, ‘I don’t care what I wear so long as I’m comfortable.’ Crocs have since made their way to Korea, but you still see these scuffs all the time.
- Jeong-min is known as the ‘state exam prep student’ (고시생). There are different tracks, like the bar exam or the foreign service exam, for example, that students will study for years in order to pass–and many don’t on their first try, or even their second. Anyone preparing for one of these exams basically lives and breathes their subject of study for the year(s) they’re preparing, so since Jeong-min appears to be studying until all hours of the night, it’s little wonder she got pegged as one. Her disinterest in fashion and dating probably also play into it.
- Jeong-min’s character description mentions banned reading materials from an ‘undercircle seminar’ (언더 써클 세미나). Jeong-min is active in the student movement for a true democratisation of South Korea which gained momentum after the Gwangju Uprising of 1980 and culminated in the June Struggle of 1987 (which occurs during the 6 month time jump in EP01), which finally forced the South Korean regime to hold fair elections and instate other democratic reforms. ‘Undercircle’ is a name for one of three subdivisions of this movement, also sometimes known as a struggle committee (투쟁위원회). The other two main subdivisions would be the National Council of Student Representatives (전대협) and the South Korean Federation of University Student Councils (한총련).
- Student protesters–like Young-ro’s brother–were often rounded up by the Agency of National Safety Planning (ANSP) and dragged off for questioning, torture, even death. Young-ro’s father used his political clout to get her brother forcibly enlisted instead.
- If you watch k-dramas, chances are you’re familiar with the word chaebol (재벌), but for the uninitiated, a chaebol is a massive conglomerate that is run and controlled by a particular family. But the word is also used as it is here–to refer to someone who belongs to such a family. They’re the ultra-rich of South Korea. The Japanese equivalent would be zaibatsu (財閥).
- Seol-hee’s character description describes her as a “‘sly’ (‘앙큼한’) realist,” complete with quotes. I think the implication is that she has a very specific goal in mind and isn’t above being calculating about who she dates in order to achieve it, but she’s not out-and-out manipulative or two-faced.
- In modern parlance, a group date would be ‘sogae-ting’ (introduction + ting) but the word used here is literally ‘meeting’ (mi-ting), which today more often means something like a business meeting. But Snowdrop takes place in 1987, so ‘mi-ting’ it is. The word ‘bang–ting’ (room + ting) appears in Young-ro and Bun-ok’s profiles, which makes sense because, in that case, all the participants were from the same room (or meant to be). In this case, Seol-hee was likely the only one of the girls from room 207 going on these particular blind dates.
- KMA = Korea Military Academy, the leading South Korean institution training officer cadets. It produces the largest number of senior officers in the Korean army. This is the school Byung-tae attends and a good place to look if you’re angling to marry a future military officer.
- What I have translated as ‘timidity incarnate’ is more literally ‘the kkeutpanwang (끝판왕) of timidity.’ The word ‘kkeutpanwang’ (‘final-round-king’) is a term borrowed from gaming and basically means ‘Final Boss.’ Which I found funny, given how it’s being used here. But the word has since entered the general lexicon and is used outside of the realm of gaming to mean ‘the ultimate X’ or ‘the epitome of X.’
- There was a long-running fan theory that Seol-hee actually isn’t the chaebol’s daughter she appears to be, but rather the daughter of Baekha Brewery’s chairman’s chauffeur — which proved to be very nearly right. The truth comes to light in a deleted scene (DS 16.48-49).
- *Kim Man-dong’s profile states that his nickname is ‘HalGyver’ (할가이버). This is a mashup of the Korean word for grandpa (‘halabeoji’) and MacGyver (1985). The joke actually made it into the dialogue in EP01, but the Disney+ subs were forced to work around it, calling him a ‘jack of all trades.’
- His code name is ‘Haegeum-seong 1’ (해금성 1호). Some of his aliases include Jang Jo-rip, Park Seung-cheol, and Kanemoto Tatsuya.
- The Korean War (1950-1953) here is referred to as simply ‘6.25’ because it broke out on the morning of 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of skirmishes along the border. Since the drama takes place in 1987, anyone over the age of 37 would have lived through it. To contextualise, Japan occupied Korea in 1910 and when WWII ended in 1945 and Japan surrendered, the Korean Peninsula was divided along the 38th parallel into two zones of occupation. The North was administered by the Soviet Union, and the South by the United States. With Cold War tensions escalating, these occupation zones were made into sovereign states in 1948–the North socialist, the South capitalist. However, neither government reconised the other as legitimate or accepted the border as permanent. When the country was divided, many families were separated and the turbulence of the Korean War only shook things up further. All this means that, in 1987, there were plenty of people alive who remembered a time when Korea was united and who had family on the opposite side of what became the DMZ.
- Though not mentioned in her profile, when Ms Oh’s dementia acts up, she speaks in a pronounced Hamgyeong-do saturi. She has a son living abroad in Japan.
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.