If Wishes Could Kill and the Cycle of Hate: the Girigo App and How the Curse Was Born

Yes, the Girigo app is real: We analyze its features, the social meaning of the ‘If Wishes Could Kill’ curse and how personal pain scales into a universal cycle of hate.

Recent series from South Korea possess a unique appeal. There is always something extreme in their stories—whether it is a desire for revenge that survives for years (The Glory), an obsession with fame that outweighs everything else (Celebrity), or the cruelest sides of the social structure (Squid Game, Bloodhounds, As You Stood By). And even when a pure horror series like If Wishes Could Kill arrives, we quickly realize that the plot isn’t just about a curse fueled by a malevolent spirit: it is also a deep analysis of hate, human pain, and their ultimate consequences for humanity.

The eight episodes of If Wishes Could Kill can be challenging to follow at times, but they are all built from elements very close to us. First among them is the Girigo app, which perfectly reflects the modern fascination with viral phenomena. In a historical moment where technology is so advanced it seems capable of solving anything, it is easy to imagine an app that grants our wishes like a digital version of Aladdin’s lamp. And yet, within the abstract fantasy of this concept, the question of whether the Girigo app is real has legitimately spread across the internet—and the surprising answer is yes. The app exists, and it reflects another fascinating perspective on modern times.

Yet, the most “real” part of If Wishes Could Kill is the curse itself, acting as an extreme symbol of how hate affects humanity and social life. It is a cause-and-effect link that isn’t obvious at first, but—if fully understood—can become a vital lesson on the role we each play in building the society we inhabit, based on how we react to our own pain and injustice.

A horror series that teaches us how to live? It seems so.

The Curse of If Wishes Could Kill: Its Origin and Meaning

At the start of If Wishes Could Kill, we watch five students interact with the Girigo app, which promises to grant wishes if they are expressed with enough intensity on video. But in the classic “be careful what you wish for” spirit that has long fascinated the world of cinema, once the app fulfills a wish, a 24-hour timer begins. It ends with the death of the person who made the wish.

If Wishes Could Kill | Official Trailer | Netflix [ENG SUB]

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For much of the series, it remains unclear to the audience how this curse was born: was it part of the Girigo app from the beginning, or is the evil nature of the curse simply using the app as a vehicle to manifest? In the early episodes, the group’s IT expert, Ha-joon, analyzes the code and soon realizes there is nothing in it regarding a timer or any instructions to kill users. This, without us realizing it, was already a clue in the early stages of the show.

The series’ prologue, on the other hand, is a perfect example of how clues can haunt and confuse us throughout the story. In the opening scene of If Wishes Could Kill, we see a young student—later revealed to be Hye-ryung—earnestly wishing into the Girigo app that “all of you should die.” It’s clear this is a blood-soaked, cursed ritual, but what remains unclear, at least at first, is who the target of her wish actually is and how it connects to the app’s curse that we see later in the series.

From Personal Revenge to a Universal Curse

The explanation of how the Girigo app curse truly began is revealed in episode 6 of If Wishes Could Kill. It is arguably the most satisfying chapter of the entire series: the episode starts by showing us Hye-ryung as a smiling, happy young woman—an image that fills the audience with a mix of curiosity and anxiety, wondering how such a cheerful person could transform into the concentration of hate we saw at the beginning of the show.

Hye-ryung’s happiness is rooted in her friendship with her classmate Kwon Si-won. Si-won is the daughter of a notorious local shaman, a woman everyone considers dangerous and stays away from, but whose powers naturally attract Hye-ryung. There is a unique bond between Hye-ryung and the shaman, which eventually turns into a deep spiritual affinity. The shaman sees Hye-ryung as a potential heir to her powers—even calling her “daughter”—something that fascinates the young woman.

This fascination, however, sends Si-won into a rage. There is deep pain in Si-won’s hatred for everything involving her mother’s powers. Based on what she knows about her past, her father died due to the reckless use of those abilities. Si-won feels a profound aversion toward her mother’s work, seeing it as a force that ruins lives: she simply cannot accept that these powers are bringing Hye-ryung closer to her mother, she sees them as a threat to the only thing she cares about. The hate we see exploding inside her is nothing more than an uncontrolled, messy reaction to that threat.

The truth is that Hye-ryung, however fascinated she may be by the shaman’s powers, still puts her friendship first. This is why the two reconcile and start working together on the Girigo app for a school project. Si-won is the tech genius of the group and is developing the app on her own. Here, we see that the app was born with a simple purpose: to take human wishes and change how we express them, giving them a video format and a digital catalog.

Encouraged by Si-won, Hye-ryung records the wish she cares about most: that their classmate Gi-tae fall in love with her. The video is saved in the Girigo app, and that night, the two friends fall asleep with their friendship restored.

The shaman's daughter and her darkest wish | If Wishes Could Kill | Netflix [ENG SUB]

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The next day, however, the hate returns. It explodes inside Si-won after she catches Hye-ryung hiding a talisman that the shaman mother had given her to protect Si-won. Discovering that Hye-ryung is still involved in her mother’s “dark magic” causes Si-won’s anger to erupt, and she ends the friendship once and for all. This time, the pain of feeling betrayed by her best friend turns first into hate, and then into a desire for revenge. Si-won decides to publicly humiliate Hye-ryung by making the wish video go viral, even asking Gi-tae to strike her in front of everyone.

This is the first moment in the story where a protagonist could have chosen not to act on their hate and pain. It was a chance to stop a reaction that would only generate more suffering. From that point on, it becomes the classic snowball that quickly turns into a destructive avalanche.

The Curse as a Metaphor for Hate in Society

Even in Hye-ryung—now wounded, betrayed by her friend, and publicly humiliated—hate takes a destructive turn. Her desire to make those who caused her suffering pay leads her to use the shaman’s teachings for the first time, putting a bloody curse into practice. This is the most symbolic message of If Wishes Could Kill: if we could avoid acting under the grip of hate, we could break the chain of actions that generate new suffering and new hate in others. It is something each of us can do as individuals—our natural contribution to the health of the society we live in.

But in South Korea, all this is much more difficult. Hye-ryung decides to end her life and sacrifice her own blood so the curse can take effect. Her wish—the first officially recorded on the now-released Girigo app—is the one we see at the start of the series: that “all of you” should die. But now we understand that the “you” was directed only at Si-won and Gi-tae, the two people who betrayed and hurt her in front of everyone.

The way Hye-ryung’s wish transforms into the systemic curse linked to the Girigo app is actually the result of the explicit wish Si-won makes just before dying. Still driven by her hate for Hye-ryung, she wishes for the curse to never end, hoping it will hurt Hye-ryung even more. It is a senseless desire, given that Hye-ryung was already dead.

In this way, If Wishes Could Kill exposes the empty meaning of hate in the harshest possible light: a power that can be destructive without benefiting anyone—neither those who feel it, nor those who suffer its effects. And while there is little we can do to filter the causes of the hate we feel (often rooted in the pain and injustice we suffer), we can do much to cut off its effects, preventing it from turning into an avalanche that swallows everyone and everything.

From Netflix to the App Store: The Girigo App is Real (and Downloadable)

As you finish If Wishes Could Kill, a question almost instinctively arises: is the Girigo app real? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Available on the Apple App Store, the application was brought to life by the production’s marketing team under the developer name ‘KWONSIWON’—the very character who births the app in the series. In this way, the Girigo (기리고) interface has literally stepped out of the screen and onto our smartphones.

In real life, the app is obviously not a tool for death, but a platform for “commemoration” (which is the literal meaning of 기리고, the term Girigo comes from the Korean verb for “to commemorate”). The downloadable version remains faithful to the original vision Si-won had in the series before the curse arrived: a social way to honor our wishes, expressing them in a specific format and saving them to be revisited later.

By allowing us to install the Girigo app, the series creates a bridge to our reality. We might keep it on our phones to stay on-trend, but it also serves as a warning—much like the reason Se-ah struggles to delete it at the end of the story. With it sitting on our home screen, we are reminded of what happens when we surrender to hate, and of the journey we shared with the characters across those eight intense episodes.

Frequently Asked Questions: Girigo and “If Wishes Could Kill”