What Is In-Yun? Past Lives and the Romance of Bad Timing
Entry No. 045 ·
By The IF Team
In-yun (인연, also romanised inyeon) is a Korean word for the providence, or fate, between two people: the idea that every meeting, down to strangers brushing past each other in the street, is the result of ties built up across past lives. It comes from Buddhist thought about cause and condition. In everyday Korean it can simply mean a meaningful connection — or, when two people say they were “not in-yun”, a relationship that was never meant to be. Many English speakers first met the word in Celine Song’s 2023 film Past Lives, where it frames a story about love, timing and the people we become.
If the film sent you home thinking about someone of your own, you are not alone, and you are not being foolish: a feeling for someone met at the wrong time is honest, even if one of you is with someone else. What follows is what the word means, how the film uses it, why bad timing moves us, and what to do with your own what-if — including saying it now on IF, the dating app for everyone, in a sealed message that waits until you are both single.
In-yun meaning: a bond that comes in layers
The word is built from two Sino-Korean characters, 因緣. The first, in, means cause. The second, yeon, means the conditions and ties that let a cause bear fruit. In Buddhist teaching everything arises from causes meeting the right conditions, and with rebirth, the ties between people are thought to carry over from one life into the next. Chinese speakers will recognise the second character from yuanfen, the fated chance that brings people together, and Japanese has its own saying that even brushing sleeves with a stranger comes from a bond in another life.
Korean has a close cousin of that proverb: even clothes touching in passing is in-yun. In-yun is not one grand bond reserved for the love of your life. It comes in degrees, and it is everywhere: the teacher who changed your course, the colleague you lost touch with, the stranger who held a door for you on a wet morning. Only the deepest layers become a marriage. In ordinary speech the word is often not mystical at all. People speak of a good in-yun the way English speakers speak of a lucky meeting, and they say two people were not in-yun when something promising never quite became anything — a phrase that blames nobody.
How in-yun differs from a soulmate
The Western soulmate is a single person made for you, and finding them is the whole plot. In-yun is looser and, in a way, kinder. You can share deep in-yun with someone and still not end up together in this life, and that is neither a failure of love nor proof you chose wrong. The frame matters more than it sounds. In a study led by a University of Toronto psychologist, recalling an argument through the “made for each other” lens left people less satisfied with their relationship, while recalling one as part of a journey did not. In-yun is still a kind of fate, but a bond laid down layer by layer has more of the journey in it than two matched halves.
What happens in Past Lives
Spoiler warning: from here to the end, this article discusses the whole film, including its ending.
Past Lives is the first feature written and directed by Celine Song. It premiered in 2023 and was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. It follows two people across three moments, twelve years apart. At twelve, Na Young and Hae Sung are classmates in Seoul with a shy crush on each other, until her family emigrates to Canada and she becomes Nora. At twenty-four, Nora (Greta Lee) is living in New York when she and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) reconnect online. They talk for months over Skype, until she asks to pause, to give herself to the life she is building there.
Soon afterwards, at a writers’ residency, she meets Arthur (John Magaro), and explains in-yun to him: strangers whose clothes brush in the street share a little of it, and a marriage takes 8,000 layers over 8,000 lifetimes. At thirty-six, Nora and Arthur are married, and Hae Sung comes to New York for a few days. Nothing illicit happens. Hae Sung never asks her to leave, and Arthur, lying awake, worries with disarming honesty about being the obstacle in someone else’s love story. On the last night, in a bar, Hae Sung wonders whether this life is itself a past life, and what the two of them might be to each other in the next. Nora walks him out to wait for his car. They stand together in silence until it comes, and after he leaves she walks back to Arthur, who has been waiting, and weeps in his arms.
What Past Lives means: two lives, not two men
The film has no villain. Arthur is kind, Hae Sung is decent, and Nora is torn less between two men than between two lives. That is why the ending lands. Her tears seem to be for Hae Sung, but also for Na Young, the girl who stayed behind in Seoul and now exists only in his memory. Emigration is its own kind of past life. Anyone who has moved countries, or simply grown into someone new, knows the ache of meeting a person who still loves the version of you that you left behind. If you have ever fallen for someone right before moving away, you know how a departure can hold a feeling at the exact moment you left.
In-yun is what lets the film hold that ache without turning it into tragedy. It gives Nora and Hae Sung a way to say their connection was real, even fated, without making it a claim on anyone. They are each other’s in-yun in this life. It is simply not, this time, the kind that ends in marriage.
Why bad timing feels so romantic
Stories of bad timing linger because the life you did not live never has to survive rent, colds and an argument about whose turn it is to cook. It stays perfect, frozen at the age you were when you last knew each other. Psychologists who study regret have found that it changes shape with time: what people did stings most at first, but looking back across years, they regret most what they never did. An unlived love is the purest kind of not doing. Nothing happened, so nothing can disappoint, and it grows brighter the longer it is left alone. Which may be why the what-if that lingers longest is so often the thing you never said. An IF is one way to make sure yours is said: once, privately, and waiting for the right time.
Past Lives is more honest about this than most love stories. The film never suggests Nora chose wrongly. She chose her life, and it is hers. It simply refuses to pretend that choosing one life costs nothing, and that is what so many viewers recognised: not regret, exactly, but grief for a door that closed while you were walking through another.
If you are carrying a what-if of your own, it helps to know that right person, wrong time is real, and that not every wrong time is the same kind: some are a status, some a season, some a structure. And if someone told you “maybe in another life”, see what “not ready for a relationship” really means before you read fate into it. Sometimes it is a gentle no, and a no, however gentle, is the answer: let it be. Sometimes they are the right person and only the timing is wrong.
The smaller version, for this lifetime
In-yun works across lifetimes, but this is the only one you can plan for. Timing in it is not just a romantic idea, either: research on people in relationships found that those who felt readier for commitment were more committed to their partners, and their relationships were more likely to last. A real connection at the wrong moment is still real, and you have more options than silence or a flight across the world.
- Let it be real without asking anything of anyone. Honouring a connection does not require acting on it today.
- Wait, if your heart says wait, but keep living your life in the meantime, as Nora lives hers. Right person, wrong time? Wait for them on IF. Whether to wait for someone who is in a relationship looks at how to wait well.
- If they are with someone, let their relationship run its own course: no pushing, no tests. Take from Hae Sung what he gets right — he is honest about his feelings and never asks Nora to choose. An IF does the same without the flight.
- If you have a partner, be as open as Nora is: she tells Arthur about Hae Sung, and Arthur meets him. A feeling for someone else is nothing to hide; lying and cheating are what cross the line. An IF can be sent honestly whatever you feel about your relationship, because nothing opens until you are both single.
- If you find each other again, meet the person they are now, not the one kept in memory, as Hae Sung learns in New York. There is a gentle way to reconnect with the one that got away, and it starts with respecting the life they have built since.
- Put the feeling somewhere — a friend, a letter you may never send — so it settles instead of circling.
You can tell them, too, and emotional honesty is brave. But opening up face to face has risks: it puts them on the spot inside a life they have chosen, and it asks for an answer today. You are potentially better off sending an IF, so that if the timing ever lines up, you are there to show them how much you have always cared.
If a what-if has quietly taken over your days, that is not a failing, but it is a good reason to talk to someone; you do not have to carry it alone.
Where IF fits
An IF is, quite literally, an “if things were different”: a private, sealed message of up to 250 characters that waits, unless they choose to delete it, and opens only once you are both single. IF is built for singles and people in relationships alike, so you can say how you feel whatever the timing, and it gives a feeling with nowhere to go somewhere to wait. No conversation can open on IF while either of you is in a relationship, so an IF is sealed, not secret: nothing about it needs hiding or a lie.
If you are single and they become single, you get 24 hours to reveal your IF; if you do, they see who you are and what you wrote and choose whether to accept, which opens a chat with your IF as its first message. If you are the one with a partner and they are single, your IF reveals when you change your own status to single. If you are both single and on IF already, the way to say it is a Like, not an IF. How an IF works covers every situation.
It is worth knowing how it lands. If they are on IF, they may be told that an IF is waiting for them — the notification says only “You received an IF” — but never who sent it or what it says until it is revealed. If they are not on IF yet, an IF sent to an email address they gave you triggers one short invitation email, while one sent to a phone number or Instagram handle simply waits in case they join. IF never discloses who sent it before a reveal. However, they can still guess from context. Knowing that, the choice is yours.
Your first IF is free, and how to send the perfect IF will help you find the words. Writing one takes a little courage, and that is rather the point. In-yun says the deepest bonds take thousands of lifetimes; you only need the right moment in this one. Say it once, mean every word, and let it wait while you live your life. If the timing ever lines up, it may lead you to where you were meant to be all along.
Questions people ask
What does in-yun mean in Past Lives?
It is the Korean idea of providence between people. Nora tells Arthur that strangers whose clothes brush share a little of it, and that a marriage takes 8,000 layers over 8,000 lifetimes. The film uses it to honour a bond between two people who do not end up together in this life.
Do Nora and Hae Sung end up together?
Not in this life. Nora stays with Arthur, Hae Sung flies home, and the film lets them be each other’s in-yun without it becoming a marriage. If you have a Hae Sung of your own, you do not need a flight across the world: an IF lets you say it now and let it wait until you are both single.
Do Koreans really believe in in-yun?
Many use the word without taking it literally. It is everyday vocabulary, much like “meant to be” in English, and you do not need to believe in rebirth to say a meeting felt like in-yun. Even Nora, having explained it to Arthur, teases that it is just something Koreans say to seduce someone. Its roots, though, are genuinely Buddhist.
How do you pronounce in-yun?
Roughly “ee-nyuhn”. The n of the first syllable slides into the second, the second vowel is closer to “uh” than to “oo”, and neither syllable takes much stress. The standard romanisation is inyeon; the film spells it in-yun.
Is Past Lives based on a true story?
Partly. Like Nora, Celine Song emigrated from Korea as a child, and the film began with a night in a New York bar when she sat between her husband and a childhood friend visiting from Korea, translating between them. The story that grew from that moment is fictionalised.
Why does Nora cry at the end of Past Lives?
Partly for Hae Sung, and partly for Na Young, the girl she was in Seoul, who now lives only in his memory. Nothing in the film says she chose wrongly; it lets her grieve the life she did not live, in the arms of the one she did.
Some people are in-yun for a lifetime, and some for a single brush of sleeves. If yours arrived at the wrong time, say it once in an IF, and let it wait for the day your timing lines up.