Fan Chants, Yumi's Cells, Potato Stir Fry
The origin of K-Pop fan chants
안녕하세요, it’s Ari, your friendly Korean source and your weekend reminder🎉 Today’s newsletter is about the origin of K-Pop fan chants, the cutest K-Drama ever, and a super easy potato recipe. Let’s start!
📗 Korean Vocabulary Exercise Book- Pick a Side! is now available on my shop (e-book) and Amazon (paperback). Check below for details!
👋 What Up Korea?
What Korean music fans are missing
I was watching TV with my family when a news anchor reported about Son Heung-min, a forward in Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur. My dad said, “Why aren’t they wearing a mask?” when a video of him scoring a goal in a stadium filled with screaming & unmasked fans was playing. While unmasked people got my dad’s attention, it was screaming that got mine.
In South Korea, all sports eventgoers & concertgoers must wear a face mask and screaming or chanting is not allowed, especially for big-scale concerts. It’s been like this for almost 2 years now. In other words, it’s been almost 2 years since Korean music fans lost something integral to them: 떼창 or sing-along. 떼창 is an old culture of Korean concertgoers which is singing along loudly the whole song or a part of a song. It doesn’t matter if the song is in Korean or not. (They even sing along guitar🙃) Since Korean music fans love sing-along so much, some even say, “We go to a concert to sing for ourselves, rather than to listen to a singer.” You’ll see it’s not an overstatement if you watch some examples like the above ☝.
If you’re a K-Pop fan, you must know about fan chants. Every K-Pop idols have an unique fan chant for each of their songs. Fans chant names of group members, bits of lyrics, and even supporting messages like “I love you” during a song. It’s not a random chant. It’s a coordinated set of words for each song. Fans memorize the chant to shout in sync at a concert. It’s a way of communication between fans and idols, fans’ way of showing love toward idols, and many times, it even completes the song💚
This is nothing but my theory but I strongly feel that 떼창 gave birth to K-Pop fan chants. Before K-Pop, Korean music was filled with songs that are easy to sing along. However, K-Pop songs filled with speedy raps and strange? lyrics are not made for sing-along. Korean K-Pop fans had to find a way to do something similar with 떼창. So they made fan chants, according to my theory 🕵️♀️
I hope the pandemic ends as soon as possible so that concertgoers and K-Pop fans can get their voice back in concerts. And I recommend you to go to a non-K-Pop, especially foreign singer’s concert when you visit my country after pandemic is over. It’s where you can feel and do 떼창, the origin of K-Pop fan chants. And I guarantee that it will give you chills!
📺 Learn Korean with Yumi’s Cells (2021)
Yumi’s Cells or 유미의 세포들 is probably the cutest romance K-Drama ever. It’s based on a big-hit Korean webtoon of the same title. According to Wikipedia, it’s a cell-based psychological romance that unravels the daily life of an ordinary office worker, Yumi through the eyes of the cells in her head. The cells are cute animation characters. Each has their roles: romance, emotion, hungry, and horny;, etc. In the first episode, when Yumi accidentally touches a male colleague’s hand, the excited romance cell yells this sentence,
손 잡았어
The quote means, “She held his hand.” Since the sentence alone doesn’t have a subject and a possessive, you should guess what it means based on the context. Korean language is all about context. If you include the subject (she) and the possessive (his), the sentence would be 그녀는 그의 손을 잡았어. However, no Korean says like this. It sounds very awkward.
Today, let’s learn about the word, 잡다 which means ‘to hold/grab/seize.’ I prepared three daily Korean sentences using this word, check them out,
(손 잡아)도 돼? Can I (hold your hand)?
(어떤 남자)가 문을 잡아줬어요. (A man) held a door open for me.
(기회)를 잡아요. Seize (the/an opportunity).
Change a bracketed word to make a different sentence! You can practice speaking the above sentences with my podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or other podcast platforms.
🎤 Rap your Korean
Send me your Korean voice message! If you’re a beginner Korean learner, speak the three sentences you learned today. You can change a bracketed word in the sentences to make a different sentence. If you’re a more advanced learner or adventurous, send me your voice message about today’s newsletter (your opinion about WUK, etc.).
Send it by next Tuesday KST, then your voice will be on the next podcast episode. If you want my feedback for your Korean speaking, leave a comment after submission. I’m all ears!
🍳 Potato Stir Fry
Potato stir fry or 감자볶음 is one of the most popular and common side dishes in the country. Koreans’ staple food is rice and Koreans eat rice with a soup and some side dishes or 반찬. When you visit a Korean food restaurant, you’ll be served with many different kinds of 반찬. We have a endless list of side dishes and most of them are vegetables. Potato stir fry is super easy to make and you can find all the ingredients at your local store or your kitchen. It’s like a warm shredded potato with vegetable salad😋 I recommend you to have this food with cooked rice. They’re a match made in heaven! Check out the list of ingredients and the recipe in a how-to-cook video and try for yourself!
🎉 Now Available! 📗 Korean Vocabulary Exercise Book- Pick a Side!
About a month ago, I got this idea of making a Korean exercise book with Pick a Side game. Now it’s available here (e-book) and Amazon (paperback). The book is made for Korean learners who want to pick up Korean words/slangs/short sentences and check their vocabulary level. Play the game, pick your choice, write down related words and a reason of your choice. Share your answer & writing on Twitter tagging @notstudyingk to summon me and talk about it!
🎁 Use subscriber-only discount code, ‘happyholiday’ to get 15% off when you buy an e-book. (Holiday is coming and it’ll be like a holiday gift exchange between you and me❤)
Thanks for reading! Leave your drama, WUK story or a Korean book request in comments! You can also ❤ or share this newsletter! See you next week! 안녕👋
thank you so much! i’ve been liking them every week they are available! it’s very hard to find something like this that kinda teaches more about the culture and i love it! thank you so much ♥︎ hope you have a great night!!
아리씨!! 축하해요!! I’m so proud of you for creating your exercise book! I can’t wait to try it out💛💛here’s my script: 오빠. 혹시 손 잡아도 돼? I was also wanting to say because I like you so much can I hold your hand, but how would I say that? 너무 좋아해서, 혹시 손 잡아도 돼? Let me know♥️ Have a great week!!🥳🥳