Understanding K-Drama: 49 Days
When Lee Bo Young's character in "God's Gift 14 Days" loses her child, her life understandably goes into a tailspin. She sits in her room and mourns for so long that her husband finally tells her that it's time to move on. After all forty-nine days have passed.
But Lee Bo Young's character cannot move on. She cannot accept the fact that her child has died.
For her the passage of forty-nine days has no significance.
K-drama viewers may have heard the time period of forty-nine days mentioned before and wondered what it signified. Those seven weeks are meant to be the period of transition between death and reincarnation.
According to Buddhist teachings a person may be born again, evolving into another existence, after they die. It does not happen instantly but takes a total of forty-nine days or seven weeks. Traditionally, during that time a person's life is judged and the actions in their past life determine how they will be reborn.
On the forty-ninth day a Guiding Ceremony may be held at a Buddhist temple to observe the transition of the deceased into the next life.
While only 22 percent of Korea's population currently identifies as Buddhist, it was the nation's dominant religion between the fourth and seventh century. The symbolism of forty-nine days has remained an integral part of Korean culture.
The seven weeks of transition was even the subject of the drama "49 Days," which stars Lee Yo Won, Nam Gyu Ri, Bae Soo Bin and Jung Il Woo. The drama is not about someone who dies right away but instead it's about a woman who winds up in a coma after an accident. She is granted forty-nine days to find three people that really love her. If she does, she can live. If not, she dies. For those 49 days she can use the body of an unhappy woman to examine her own previous life. She thinks her task will be easy but when she examines her past life, she discovers that she has focused on all the wrong things and as a result is not truly loved. In the process she learns what truly matters in life and her search for meaning also helps another woman find meaning in hers.
Lee Bo Young's character in "God's Gift - 14 Days" may not recognize the significance of the forty-nine days that have passed since her daughter's death, but she will have a few more days to change the past.
