Gang uk only learns why Yeo ri has been alone all this time by living through it himself. Full spoilers.
⚠️ Spoilers for Episodes 3-4.
Episodes 3 and 4 flip the entire premise of this drama. The moment what was Yeo ri’s secret alone becomes something she shares with Gang uk, both their relationship and the nature of the cases change completely. Episode 3 builds something specific between them, and episode 4 is where the real conflict begins.
Marry Within Two Months — The Grandmother’s Ultimatum
Episode 3 opens with the question of who inherits the hotel. Yeo ri’s grandmother gives her a condition: marry within two months. Miss the deadline and the succession rights could go to someone else — and she adds a warning that old licensing problems might resurface too.
Rather than rushing into a wedding, Yeo ri settles on a compromise: an engagement first, with the two-month clock still running.
Kang Min hwan’s Adoption — Where His Feelings Began
Yeo ri’s grandmother appears to be considering Kang Min hwan (also written Kang Min-hwan) as the marriage candidate. But Min hwan was adopted.
Years ago, relatives were gossiping about exactly that, and Min hwan and Yeo ri happened to overhear it together. In that moment, Yeo ri covered his ears. Then she carried on as though nothing had happened.
Whatever Min hwan feels for Yeo ri probably started right there.
Park Seung jae’s Scheme
Park Seung jae (also written Park Seung-jae), indicted for murder, receives a prison visit from Cheon Ha ri. He tells her he expects to be out soon, and promises that once he is, he’ll do everything he can to make sure she inherits Reina Hotel.
Ha ri takes the bait.
“Can You Still See Them?”
After meeting Park Seung jae, Ha ri goes to Yeo ri with a question: how exactly did she find the body inside that water tank? And then the follow-up — can she still see ghosts?
Yeo ri can’t give a clean answer.
If it becomes known that she sees ghosts, the doubts won’t stop at the supernatural. They’ll extend to her competence as an executive and her mental state. What could be a gift for solving cases turns into a fatal liability in a succession fight.
Yeo ri once underwent a nureum-gut (누름굿), a shamanic ritual meant to suppress the spiritual affliction. Everyone around her assumed it worked and that she stopped seeing ghosts afterward. It never actually went away. And anyone whose hand touches hers starts seeing them too.
Drinking Alone, and the Gloves That Came Off
Meanwhile, Gang uk is pulled off the case and demoted from the criminal division to a cold case unit — a dead-end posting engineered by Park Seung jae’s father, a powerful politician.
Out drinking with his team, Gang uk spots Yeo ri drinking by herself. However much she keeps her distance, Yeo ri wants what everyone else has: to laugh and talk like a normal person. She ends up joining them, gets thoroughly drunk, and finally erupts — “What do you even know about me?” — grabbing Gang uk’s shirt and tearing it in the process. Years of loneliness and resentment coming out all at once.
Then she pulls off the gloves she never takes off. For Yeo ri, they aren’t an accessory. They’re a barrier that stops her hand from touching anyone else’s.
The Morning Yeo ri Can’t Remember
The next day, Yeo ri has no memory of any of it. She calls Gang uk to apologize and sends money for the shirt she ruined. Finding the amount excessive, Gang uk shows up at her apartment to return it in person.
Yeo ri asks how he found her place. When Gang uk explains that she gave him the address herself the night before and he punched it into his navigation, the whole evening comes rushing back — the gloves coming off, the torn shirt, and Gang uk catching her bare hand as she stepped toward traffic.
The First Ghost Gang uk Ever Sees
Wanting to check whether the contact has done anything to him, Yeo ri lets Gang uk inside.
That’s where he sees the child ghost. He has no idea that’s what it is. Yeo ri tells him it’s a kid playing hide-and-seek and tries to hurry him out, but a door slams somewhere in the apartment, and Gang uk — using the possibility of an intruder as his excuse — starts playing hide-and-seek with a ghost.
The child doesn’t stay in Yeo ri’s apartment, though. It turns up in Gang uk’s home too. He goes into full panic, and Yeo ri rushes over to him.
Two People Holding Hands
Yeo ri hands the terrified Gang uk a drink to steady him, then calmly explains that she has been seeing ghosts for a long time and what his situation actually is.
Only now does Gang uk understand why she kept turning up wherever a body was found.
Episode 4 — The Child’s Story
Yeo ri talks to the child ghost, and together they set out to find the body.
It leads them to a car accident in a remote area. The child is already dead; only the father survived. Even after the father is rescued, the child won’t leave — pointing, over and over, at the trunk.
Inside the trunk, they find the child’s younger sibling, alive.
Only then does the child disappear.
The Yacht Accident — Where the Curse Started
Once the scene is handled, Gang uk asks Yeo ri when she started seeing ghosts.
It began with a yacht accident. Yeo ri lost the friend who was with her and survived alone. Afterward, that friend — along with others no one else could see — started appearing to her. And she learned that anyone whose hand touched hers would see them too.
Word spread that being around Cheon Yeo ri meant getting haunted. She has lived alone ever since.
One Month — How Long Gang uk Has to Endure
Yeo ri tells Gang uk the ghosts will be visible to him for about a month, and then they’ll stop. She asks him not to see her again, warning that anyone who gets close to her ends up unhappy.
Gang uk takes her hand instead.
“That’s a month starting today, right?”
Rather than pulling away, he comforts her about everything she’s carried.
How Gang uk Learns to Handle Ghosts
His nights are brutal. Sleep paralysis on day one, a spirit wrongfully killed during the Joseon dynasty, a woman in white — they keep coming.
He tries to hold out for the month and barely makes it a week before going back to Yeo ri. And what he says isn’t about himself. He can’t stop thinking about the fact that she has done this for ten years while he cracked in seven days. It moves something in her.
Yeo ri teaches him what she’s learned. For sleep paralysis or spirits trying to startle him: act like you can’t see them, don’t flinch. Don’t talk to them, don’t engage at all. Scatter salt, and use the smell of garlic to drive them back.
The comedy of this stretch comes from the reversal — the ghosts who terrified Gang uk at first end up unsettled themselves when he starts flatly ignoring them.
With Yeo ri’s help, Gang uk survives the month, and the two grow considerably closer. He suggests they keep in touch somehow, even by video call. Yeo ri says that once this is over, they should never see each other again.
Cheon Ha ri and Park Seung jae’s Plot
Ha ri visits Park Seung jae again and tells him it was Yeo ri’s tip that led Gang uk to the body. She also points out that Gang uk’s weak spot is Yeo ri herself.
Park Seung jae is released when the court grants his petition for review of detention. Gang uk goes to confront him, and Park Seung jae throws Yeo ri’s name back at him as a threat.
Not long after, Yeo ri is attacked by masked men while driving at night.
At the same time, Gang uk’s mother turns up at his home. She repeats her usual warning about staying away from women born in the year of the black monkey, and physically blocks him from leaving the house. She seems to know something. But a ghost gets through to him instead, telling him Yeo ri is in danger.
Park Seung jae has abducted Yeo ri and locked her up, demanding to know whether she really sees ghosts — the information Ha ri wants. But he’s after something worse than that. He plans to inject her with drugs and frame her as part of a narcotics party involving third-generation chaebol heirs and celebrities.
Gang uk crashes in at the last moment and gets her out. Then Park Seung jae drives a car straight into him. His colleagues and the police arrive in time to get him to a hospital, but Gang uk falls into a coma.
Yeo ri breaks down, blaming herself. And in the middle of it, she sees Gang uk’s ghost. She holds him and sobs.
But wait — can you even hold a ghost?
The Real Threat Was Never the Ghosts
I keep wondering whether this kind of drama really needs a villain like Park Seung jae. He’s so predictable that he stops feeling like a person who could exist.
The legal part bothers me more. A murder suspect can absolutely seek a review of detention in Korea, and a court can order release if continued detention is no longer justified. What feels difficult to buy here is how conveniently the drama uses that release. Park Seung jae is the son of a powerful politician, new evidence has just tied him to his ex-girlfriend’s death, and almost immediately after walking free he’s able to abduct Yeo ri.
Cheon Ha ri irritates me for different reasons. However much money is on the table, would anyone actually help a man suspected of murder?
Her name gives me an unintended Korean word association, too. Cheon Ha ri (천하리) sits surprisingly close to cheonhada (천하다), a word that can mean low or vulgar. I don’t know whether the writers intended the pun, but given how Ha ri behaves, it’s hard not to hear it.
Credit Where It’s Due — The Original Film
The first ghost Gang uk ever sees is a child.
Spooky in Love is based on a film, and in that original, the first ghost the male lead sees is also a child — and he also mistakes it for a game of hide-and-seek.
That’s a real gesture of respect toward the source material.
So What Is a “Black Monkey,” Anyway?
International viewers probably have no idea what the black monkey warning means, so here’s the short version.
Korea uses a twelve-animal zodiac inherited from Chinese tradition — rat, ox, tiger, and so on, one assigned to each year. But that’s only half the system. Those twelve animals combine with ten heavenly stems tied to the five elements, and each element carries a color: blue for wood, red for fire, yellow for earth, white for metal, and black for water. Any given combination only comes around once every sixty years. Koreans call this cycle the yuksipgapja (육십갑자), the sexagenary cycle.
So “black monkey” refers to imsinnyeon (임신년, 壬申年), the year of the water monkey — water being the element associated with black. Those years land on 1932, 1992, and 2052.
Which means Gang uk’s mother warning him away from a black monkey woman is the show telling us Cheon Yeo ri was born in 1992. That makes her 33 or 34 in 2026.
For Korean viewers familiar with the sexagenary cycle, that single line gives away Yeo ri’s birth year. For anyone watching with subtitles, it reads as nothing more than a superstitious warning — when it’s actually dropping precise information about who this character is.
Basic Info
- English Title: Spooky in Love
- Korean Title: 오싹한 연애
- Based on: the 2011 film Spellbound, directed by Hwang In-ho
- Premiere: July 18, 2026
- Network: tvN (Saturdays & Sundays, 21:10 KST)
- Streaming: Netflix
- Episodes: 12
- Director: Lee Min-soo
- Writer: Choi Jung-mi
- Cast: Park Eun bin (Cheon Yeo ri), Yang Se jong (Ma Gang uk), Ong Seong wu (Kang Min hwan), Jo Hye joo (Cheon Ha ri), Kim Do wan (Park Seung jae)
Catching up on the series? Start here:
Spooky in Love Review: A Rom-Com Horror Hybrid Made for Summer
Spooky in Love Episodes 1-2: A Fated Meeting at Every Crime Scene
Spooky in Love Episodes 5-6: A 300-Year-Old Cold Case, and an Engagement Nobody Saw Coming
Spooky in Love Episodes 7-8: A 300-Year-Old Truth, and a Real Proposal
Spooky in Love Episodes 9-10: A 0.5% Victory, and a Broken Engagement
Spooky in Love Episodes 11-12: The Curse Ends, and Holding Hands Becomes a Miracle
Here’s the condensed version of all twelve episodes.
Spooky in Love: Full Story and Ending Explained
In the mood for more Korean romance?
Can This Love Be Translated? — Netflix’s Most Charming Romance of 2026
Want more Korean dramas to watch alongside this one?
Should You Watch The East Palace? A Korean Viewer’s Take
A Shop for Killers Season 1: What You Need to Know Before Season 2
Agent Kim Reactivated: What You Need to Know Before You Watch
Do you think Gang uk keeps seeing ghosts after the month is up? And what did Yeo ri actually hold at the end of episode 4? Let me know in the comments.
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