Past Lives: This untranslatable Korean word for eternal love has ancient Buddhist roots
A24Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro star in Celine Song's Oscar-nominated film Past Lives, which explores the word inyeon, the ancient concept of fated love.
Which word would you use to describe someone that you had held hands with, but never kissed? Perhaps you were childhood sweethearts who reconnected as adults, but you had never said the words "I love you". How would you describe your relationship to someone who you rushed home to talk on the phone with, but never dated? What would you call someone that you may have loved in a past life? In English, that word might combine the intensity of "soulmate" with a more innocent version of "situationship". In Korea, however, it is encapsulated in the word inyeon.
In 2023, Celine Song brought her interpretation of inyeon to life in her directorial debut Past Lives – a bilingual Korean and English film in which the word is also its central theme. Nominated for best picture and original screenplay Oscars, it follows main character Nora Moon (played by Greta Lee) as she migrates from Seoul to New York via Canada, and navigates her relationships with two loves – her husband Arthur (John Magaro) and her childhood best friend Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), with whom she reconnects as an adult.
Nora first introduces inyeon in a voiceover as a visual montage weaves together scenes from her first meeting with Arthur with scenes showing Hae Sung's move to China and subsequent encounter with another woman there. She describes the word to Arthur like this: "It means providence or… fate. But it's specifically about relationships between people. I think it comes from Buddhism and reincarnation. It's an inyeon if two strangers even walk by each other on the street and their clothes accidentally brush. Because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives. If two people get married, they say it's because there have been 8,000 layers of inyeon over 8,000 lifetimes."
Since the success of the film, Song has described inyeon in her own words by calling it a commonplace word in Korea, "something Koreans say to seduce someone" (also a line from the film) and a word deeply connected to Eastern philosophy, distinguishing it from Western concepts of destiny as "something that you cannot stop from coming to you". But what does the word really mean and how does Song's description of the word, both in the Past Lives script and in real life, relate to its real meaning?
In search of a dictionary definition
Dr Lisa Jeon, an adjunct professor of Linguistics at the University of North Texas, says the most common way that Koreans use inyeon is to suggest that it is an all-powerful, predestined force that cannot be changed, regardless of one's will.
However, the use of the word and what it actually means is complicated by a number of factors: Korean is generally considered a "listener-responsible" language, meaning the onus is on the listener to understand what the word means based on context. This specific word happens to have various meanings, so it's possible that the speaker's meaning could differ from the listener's interpretation of it. And while the word has roots in Buddhism, it has become almost entirely disassociated with the Buddhist religion in use and taken on a more secular meaning over time.
A24The word's actual definition, according to Dr Jeon, can range from four different meanings: the ties between two people over the course of their lives; fate, destiny, or a predestined relationship; a karmic and dharmic [moral order] connection; the consequences of cause and effect. It's not easy to pin down an English counterpart because the word has so many nuances, she says.
More like this:
That context is also necessary in understanding the use of inyeon in Past Lives. Towards the end of the film, Nora explains to Hae Sung that their relationship was not meant to be, using the word in a romantic context: "But in this life, we don't have the inyeon to be that kind of person to each other." Later that evening, Hae Sung asks a question connoting the word's dharmic meaning instead: "If this is also a past life, do you think we already have a new inyeon to one another in our next life">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });