I swung by the coffeeshop after work one night recently to give my “Uncle” Lee some strawberries, and, as usual, ended up shutting the place down with him. We talked for hours as we sampled some “prototypes” of his latest invention, the peppermint latte. (Lee’s a retired chemical engineer, and thinks he has the perfect technique for steaming the milk.) His wife Yoon brought us a late dinner topokki and twigim (rice noodles with spicy sauce and fried vegetable fritters), and we all sat around together drinking sweet lemon tea.

At some point, talk turned to in yeon (인연). This untranslatable term relates to a uniquely Korean concept of destiny. I often feel that destiny brought me here to Korea, and specifically to Lee’s coffeeshop, especially due to the recent events that transpired there. I told him so.

Like many Koreans, Lee was tickled to learn that I know about in yeon. In fact, I first heard about it while I was still in the U.S., via my friend Jess’ blog. In her story of in yeon, she wrote about being stranded in a small town in Korea during a festival, when she and her husband, Mayo stopped to take a rest in a traditional tea shop. They struck up a conversation with the kind proprietor, who spoke a little English, and “without hesitation,” Jess wrote, the woman invited them both to stay the night in her home.

There, they learned that the teashop owner’s daughter was living overseas, where the daughter planned to marry a Canadian man. The woman and her husband hoped that the people in their daughter’s new hometown would show her the same love and kindness they were showing my friends. The couple even showed Jess their daughter’s wedding dress—which had Jess’s name on the label.

That love should link these two unlikely parties together, the teashop owner said, was surely in yeon. 

“Koreans believe that all relationships (even fleeting encounters) are a part of our destiny,” Jess wrote at the time, “and she felt this when she met us at the tea shop.”

Photo of Seoraksan tea shop owner by Jessica Perlaza

Since I read Jess’ lovely story, I’ve been interested in the idea of in yeon, and I love asking Korean people what it means to them, as I always hear a different and uniquely poetic answer. 

In one of my favorite stories about in yeon, it is said that destiny takes the form of a grandmother spirit (grandmothers occupying a special place in Korean culture, and in my own heart). This fairy grandmother comes and ties a red thread to the finger of each newborn, and winds and loops it through this person’s life, tying him or her to every person in his or her in yeon, until finally the thread ends at the finger of the person he or she will love forever.

The catch is, to actually find this person, you have to keep your eye on the thread, take each interaction seriously, because that is wonleh geuleonkeoya (원래 그런거야), the way it’s supposed to be. Each meeting is a clue. It’s kismet. It’s maktub. It’s a bread crumb on your way to your destiny. And if you ignore someone or mistreat someone along the way, you will be lost, in a profound metaphysical sense. It is said that there is in yeon in even the mere brushing of sleeves(옷깃만 스쳐도 인연), seuchada (스차다) being the onomatopoeic Korean verb which means “to brush in passing.”

It appears likely that this story was adapted from an older East Asian myth about a red thread of destiny, used by the gods to tie two lovers together. In China, the grandfatherly god Yue Xia Lao is responsible for this cosmic matchmaking; in Japan, the concept of the thread is known as akai ito or unmei no akai ito, and has launched more than a few manga storylines.

Apparently, the concept is so well-known in certain areas that “merely holding up the thumb is used as shorthand for girlfriend, and holding a pinky up would indicate a boyfriend.”

The idea that your destiny dead-ends at the object of your everlasting love is very romantic, of course. But I like the emphasis in yeon places on the journey rather than the destination—on the compassion you are supposed to share with everyone, not just your one-and-only.

In fact, Lee told me that an important aspect of Korean in yeon is how it relates to one’s family, and to the Asian Hindu-Buddhist belief in past lives. It is often said that people whom you meet and become close with through in yeon, and especially the people in your family, are likely people you’ve met many times before.

“I think me, you and Yoon have deep in yeon,” he said. Yoon and I both nodded in agreement.

Lee said husbands and wives are said to have met each other one million times before. “Sometimes meeting with anger, sometimes with love,” Yoon interjected with a big smile. “Sometimes lots of anger, sometimes lots of love.”

Lee also said that some Koreans believe their children are people to whom they owe a great debt from a past life — which is why Korean parents often seem willing to sacrifice everything for their children. Korean children are not expected to work until they graduate from university (which will, of course, be paid for by their parents), and often live at home well into their late 20s, so this is a great commitment indeed. (Later, when his youngest daughter bounded into the coffee shop to ask for a bit of money for dinner with friends, Lee opened the shop’s cash register with a baleful smile and said to me, “See? I owed her a lot from a past life.”)

Family members are bound together by deep in yeon and destined to keep meeting. This is because, Lee said, “When you see the suffering of another person and you do not know them, you can choose to look away. But when you see someone in your family suffering, you cannot look away. And regardless, you must keep meeting them. You will always see them again. even in the afterlife, it is said that i will see my ancestors, my father, and I will bow to them. Your family is your highest in yeon.”

Lee in his family home in Samcheongdong during Chuseok, a holiday on which people celebrate and pray to their ancestors.

The mirror in Lee’s old bedroom, where he lived until he met Yoon at age 32; her picture is still here.

Yoon today, standing in her mother-in-law’s kitchen

Lately, I have been meditating on the amazing family and friends I have in the States, my adopted family here in Korea, and the way everyone has come together to support my brother and I as I continue to follow my red thread to Seoul and back.

I love the idea of being tied to all the many wonderful people I’ve met in my lifetime, not just one soulmate. It feels like the opposite of the claustrophobic concept of love sold in Cosmo, where you exist to please only your partner. It’s the kind of love you feel for the person sitting next to you in the rocking chair or, inexplicably, for the stranger sitting next to you on the plane, or for the people around the dinner table with whom you’ve fought, it seems, a million times before, and yet you still aren’t walking away.

Family: your highest in yeon

I think the beauty of the concept of in yeon lies in the way it ties us to our loved ones, past and future, like so many lovely pearls on a string. To keep us from walking away. And when that thread is leading toward your destiny, toward love, toward the repayment of millienia of grace, why would you ever want to walk away?