Warning: Major spoilers for Spooky in Love Episodes 1–12.
One of the biggest mysteries in Spooky in Love is hidden inside Ma Gang-uk himself.
We eventually learn that Gang-uk received a heart transplant 12 years ago.
That timing immediately raises a question.
Twelve years ago was also when Kang Ji-hwan died in the yacht incident that changed Cheon Yeo-ri’s life.
So whose heart did Gang-uk receive?
The finale gives us a direct answer:
Gang-uk received Kang Ji-hwan’s heart.
Ji-hwan died, but his donated heart saved Gang-uk’s life.
That revelation is more than a dramatic coincidence. It connects the drama’s three central characters — Yeo-ri, Ji-hwan and Gang-uk — and helps explain several mysteries that had been building throughout the series.
Here is how the heart transplant connection works and what it means for the ending of Spooky in Love.
Whose Heart Does Gang-uk Have?
Kang Ji-hwan is Gang-uk’s heart donor.
Episode 12 confirms it directly.
Gang-uk asks his grandmother whether the person who donated the heart that saved him was someone named Ji-hwan.
She admits the truth.
The donor was the son of the woman Gang-uk and his grandmother had previously met.
That woman was Ji-hwan’s mother.
Gang-uk then realizes that the person his grandmother had quietly remembered and prayed for over the years was the young man whose death allowed him to live.
That young man was Kang Ji-hwan.
When Did Gang-uk Receive Ji-hwan’s Heart?
The transplant happened 12 years before the main story.
That is important because it matches the period of Ji-hwan’s death.
Ji-hwan died following the yacht incident connected to Yeo-ri and Min-hwan.
At roughly the same point in the past, Gang-uk desperately needed a donor heart.
The drama initially presents these as separate pieces of information.
But they gradually begin to fit together:
Ji-hwan dies.
Gang-uk receives a heart transplant.
Ji-hwan’s family knows Gang-uk’s grandmother.
Gang-uk enters Yeo-ri’s life years later.
By the time the drama openly reveals the truth, many viewers had already started connecting those clues.
When Does Spooky in Love First Hint at Gang-uk’s Heart Transplant?
The heart mystery is planted well before the finale.
By the middle episodes, viewers learn that Gang-uk underwent a heart transplant 12 years earlier.
Min-hwan also begins investigating Gang-uk’s medical history and becomes interested in identifying the donor.
That is a major clue because the drama repeatedly emphasizes the same 12-year timeline surrounding Ji-hwan.
Once the transplant is revealed, the obvious question becomes:
Who died 12 years ago who could have given Gang-uk that heart?
There is one character whose death dominates Yeo-ri’s past.
Ji-hwan.
Did Viewers Guess Ji-hwan Was the Heart Donor Before the Reveal?
Yes — and quite early.
Once the transplant storyline appeared, viewers began theorizing that Ji-hwan must have been Gang-uk’s donor.
There were several reasons.
The timing matched.
Gang-uk’s grandmother appeared to have a mysterious connection to Ji-hwan’s family.
Gang-uk was becoming increasingly connected to Yeo-ri.
And perhaps most importantly, Ji-hwan’s ghost did not seem to treat Gang-uk the same way he treated other men around her.
Earlier in the drama, Ji-hwan’s supernatural presence appears to frighten away someone who might marry Yeo-ri.
That initially makes him look like a jealous ghost.
But Gang-uk is different.
Ji-hwan does not simply try to remove him from Yeo-ri’s life.
At times, the ghost’s actions even appear to help bring Gang-uk toward her.
Once viewers learned about Gang-uk’s transplant, that difference suddenly had a possible explanation.
Why Doesn’t Ji-hwan’s Ghost Attack Gang-uk?
This is where the heart connection becomes especially interesting.
If Ji-hwan were simply a jealous dead man who wanted Yeo-ri for himself, Gang-uk should be the person he hates most.
Gang-uk falls in love with Yeo-ri.
Yeo-ri falls in love with him.
They become increasingly serious about their relationship.
Yet Ji-hwan does not behave toward Gang-uk as though he were merely a romantic rival.
Why?
Because Gang-uk carries Ji-hwan’s heart.
The drama does not suggest that Gang-uk literally becomes Ji-hwan or that Ji-hwan controls him through the transplant.
Gang-uk remains his own person.
But the transplant creates a supernatural and symbolic connection between the two men.
Ji-hwan died.
Gang-uk lived.
And the organ that made Gang-uk’s continued life possible came from Ji-hwan.
Does Gang-uk Love Yeo-ri Because He Has Ji-hwan’s Heart?
No.
This distinction is important.
The drama never needs us to believe that Gang-uk loves Yeo-ri simply because Ji-hwan’s heart is inside him.
Gang-uk develops his own relationship with her.
He gets to know Yeo-ri as an adult.
He sees her fear, loneliness, stubbornness and vulnerability.
He chooses to remain beside her even after experiencing the frightening consequences of her supernatural ability.
Those are Gang-uk’s choices.
The heart transplant creates a connection between their histories.
It does not erase Gang-uk’s identity.
If the drama suggested that his love came entirely from Ji-hwan’s heart, it would actually weaken Yeo-ri and Gang-uk’s romance.
Instead, the transplant works better as a bridge between Yeo-ri’s past and her future.
Ji-hwan Represents Yeo-ri’s Past
Ji-hwan belongs to the tragedy that shaped Yeo-ri’s life.
He died while Yeo-ri survived.
Afterward, she carried enormous guilt.
Her connection to the spirit world also became tied to what happened during that period.
For 12 years, Ji-hwan therefore represents something Yeo-ri cannot completely escape.
The past is literally still following her.
She sees the dead.
Ji-hwan remains nearby.
And the truth about what happened on the yacht remains unresolved.
Then Gang-uk appears.
Gang-uk Represents Yeo-ri’s Future
Gang-uk is different.
He belongs to Yeo-ri’s present life.
He falls in love with the woman she has become rather than the girl she was before Ji-hwan died.
He also accepts the supernatural part of her life that has frightened other people away.
That makes the heart transplant symbolically powerful.
Ji-hwan’s heart exists inside the man with whom Yeo-ri may finally build a future.
But Gang-uk is not Ji-hwan’s replacement.
He is the person who receives a life made possible by Ji-hwan’s death and then uses that life to love Yeo-ri in his own way.
The past does not return.
Instead, something from the past helps make the future possible.
Why Did Gang-uk’s Grandmother Hide the Donor’s Identity?
Gang-uk’s grandmother knew more about the transplant than she initially told him.
She remained aware of the donor family and continued remembering Ji-hwan after the operation.
This helps explain why her connection to Ji-hwan’s mother seemed mysterious earlier in the series.
For Gang-uk, the transplant was the reason he survived.
For Ji-hwan’s mother, however, the same event followed the death of her son.
Those are two completely different emotional realities connected by one heart.
One family lost a child.
Another family got to keep theirs.
Gang-uk’s grandmother never forgot that.
Her secrecy therefore becomes part of the drama’s larger theme of people carrying old debts, guilt and gratitude without speaking openly about them.
Why Was Gang-uk’s Grandmother So Afraid for Him?
The transplant also helps explain her intense fear surrounding Gang-uk’s safety.
Gang-uk nearly died once already.
His life exists because another young man died and became an organ donor.
To his grandmother, that makes his survival feel precious and fragile.
Her fear becomes even stronger when supernatural warnings enter the story.
When she becomes convinced that Gang-uk’s relationship with Yeo-ri could put him in danger, she tries to separate them.
From her perspective, she is protecting the grandson whose life was saved once before.
But that fear creates one of the drama’s cruelest ironies.
The heart she is trying so desperately to protect originally belonged to Ji-hwan — the very person whose fate is deeply connected to Yeo-ri.
Why Does Yeo-ri Break Up With Gang-uk After Learning About His Heart?
Near the end of the drama, Yeo-ri learns that Gang-uk had a heart transplant.
Combined with the supernatural warnings surrounding him, this terrifies her.
Yeo-ri has spent years believing that people who become too close to her can be harmed.
She already carries guilt over Ji-hwan’s death.
The idea that Gang-uk — a man living with a transplanted heart — might die because of her is unbearable.
So she tries to end their relationship.
From Yeo-ri’s perspective, leaving Gang-uk becomes an act of protection.
She would rather lose him than risk becoming responsible for another death.
But she does not yet know the most important fact.
The heart she is trying to protect is Ji-hwan’s heart.
When Does Gang-uk Learn the Truth?
Gang-uk finally confirms the truth in Episode 12.
He asks his grandmother directly about his donor.
Was his name Ji-hwan?
She says yes.
Gang-uk then understands the connection between himself, Ji-hwan’s family and the events that have surrounded Yeo-ri.
After learning the truth, he goes to Ji-hwan’s memorial.
This is an important moment because the relationship between the two men finally becomes explicit.
They never truly knew each other.
Yet Gang-uk has lived for 12 years because Ji-hwan’s heart continued beating inside him.
What Does Gang-uk’s Visit to Ji-hwan Mean?
Gang-uk’s visit is essentially an acknowledgment of the life he received.
Until then, the transplant had been part of Gang-uk’s own medical history.
Now it has a name.
A family.
A death.
And a connection to the woman he loves.
The heart inside Gang-uk is no longer an anonymous donor organ.
It belonged to Ji-hwan.
That knowledge forces Gang-uk to confront an extraordinary fact:
The man whose death has haunted Yeo-ri is also the man whose death allowed Gang-uk to survive long enough to meet her.
That does not make their romance destiny in a simple fairy-tale sense.
But it makes their histories inseparable.
Does Ji-hwan’s Heart Explain the Ghost Connection?
Partly.
The heart transplant is one part of a much larger supernatural structure connecting the three characters.
Ji-hwan’s lingering spirit is primarily connected to his unresolved death and Yeo-ri’s unusual connection to the spirit world.
But Gang-uk carrying Ji-hwan’s heart gives the drama a physical connection alongside the supernatural one.
Think of the three characters this way:
Ji-hwan — the dead
Yeo-ri — the person caught between the living and the dead
Gang-uk — the living man carrying something from the dead
That triangle is at the center of Spooky in Love.
And the finale finally separates them.
Ji-hwan can leave.
Yeo-ri can remain among the living.
Gang-uk can continue the life that Ji-hwan’s donated heart helped save.
Why the Heart Reveal Matters to the Ending
The heart reveal could easily have been nothing more than a dramatic K-drama coincidence.
Instead, it completes the story’s central idea about letting go.
Yeo-ri has spent 12 years unable to fully escape Ji-hwan’s death.
Gang-uk has spent those same 12 years living because of Ji-hwan.
One person carries the emotional consequence of Ji-hwan’s death.
The other carries its physical consequence.
When Yeo-ri nearly dies in the finale, Ji-hwan finally gets the opportunity to release her.
He does not ask her to remain with him.
He sends her back toward life.
Toward Gang-uk.
Then Ji-hwan himself finally crosses over.
The circle is complete.
Is Gang-uk Basically Ji-hwan’s Replacement?
No — and that may be the most important interpretation of the transplant twist.
Gang-uk is not Ji-hwan 2.0.
He is not a reincarnation.
He does not inherit Ji-hwan’s personality.
And Yeo-ri does not love him because her dead friend’s heart somehow makes her do so.
Gang-uk is Gang-uk.
What he receives from Ji-hwan is life, not identity.
That distinction gives the transplant reveal its emotional meaning.
Ji-hwan does not return to reclaim Yeo-ri.
His heart continues living in another person, while his spirit eventually accepts that Yeo-ri must continue living too.
Both of them move forward.
Just in different ways.
So Why Did Gang-uk Receive Ji-hwan’s Heart?
On the plot level, the answer is simple:
Ji-hwan became Gang-uk’s heart donor after his death 12 years earlier.
But on the story level, the meaning is much bigger.
Ji-hwan’s death creates two survivors.
Yeo-ri survives the yacht tragedy but carries guilt and a connection to ghosts.
Gang-uk survives his own medical crisis because Ji-hwan’s donated heart saves him.
Twelve years later, those two survivors meet and fall in love.
And when Ji-hwan finally leaves the world of the living, he does not take either of them with him.
He allows them to remain together.
That is why the heart transplant is more than a twist.
Ji-hwan’s heart connects the tragedy that created Yeo-ri’s past to the man who becomes part of her future.