A growing controversy surrounding a casual remark made by WONI, a member of the K-pop girl group RESCENE, has ignited an intense public debate in South Korea, drawing commentary even from prominent political figures like Cho Kuk, the former leader of the Rebuilding Korea Party.
The issue began with a video uploaded to RESCENE‘s official channel, where WONI, who is from Geoje in the Gyeongsang region of South Korea, was visiting the home of her Japanese bandmate, MINAMI. During a moment in a darkened room, the show’s producer remarked on the eerie atmosphere, asking, “Isn’t it scary?” WONI responded naturally in her regional speech pattern, using a phrase that translated to, “It’s scary. The lighting itself is scary.”
What seemed like a harmless interaction soon blew up online when the director of a well-known documentary film publicly claimed that Wonhee’s specific phrasing, “museopno,” ending the sentence with the sound “-no”, was actually a piece of online hate speech popular within “Ilbe,” a notorious far-right online community. In South Korea, this specific community is known for mocking the tragic death of former President Roh Moo Hyun by mechanically adding “-no” to the end of standard Korean sentences to mimic and demean him.
Fans of tripleS immediately rushed to WONI’s defense, arguing that the accusation was a massive over-interpretation. They countered that “it is an over-interpretation of a dialect that is actually used every day in the Gyeongsang region.”
The documentary director later clarified their stance, stating that while they didn’t think the young idol used the word maliciously, the trend was still worrying. The director noted, “Even though Gyeongsang dialect researchers have pointed out multiple times that this specific phrasing is grammatically incorrect, the non-standard use of ‘-no’ is becoming normalized among younger generations. I do not believe it was used intentionally as an Ilbe expression, but rather, that shifting language trend is what concerns me.”
As the internet debate intensified over whether the idol was just using her hometown dialect or accidentally repeating online hate speech, politician Cho Kuk weighed in to explain the linguistic nuances to the public. He pointed out that online trolls misuse the dialect incorrectly compared to actual locals, stating, “There are people who claim that the use of ‘-no’ at the end of sentences by Ilbe to mock President Roh Moo Hyun is also how it is originally used in Busan and the Gyeongsang region. As a rebuttal to this, please refer to how actual people from Busan distinguish the two.”
Cho Kuk went on to explain the technical grammar rules of the region to show why people were suspicious, arguing, “Based on my observations, Ilbe expressions mechanically attach ‘-no’ to the end of standard Korean sentences,” rather than blending it naturally into the regional dialect. He further broke it down for onlookers, explaining, “In the Gyeongsang dialect, ‘-na’ and ‘-no’ are used very distinctly in question sentences. ‘-Na’ is used when asking a simple yes or no question, while ‘-no’ is only used when asking for specific explanations, like who, what, where, or why.” Because WONI used the sound in a statement rather than an open-ended question, it triggered the linguistic watchdogs online.
Reform Party leader Lee Jun Seok strongly criticized the situation, stating, “A 22-year-old idol is being branded as a far-right extremist simply for saying ‘it’s scary’ in her own regional dialect. People are trying to force a political ideological test on someone based on a single word ending.”
People Power Party lawmaker Yoon Sang Hyun also weighed in on the absurdity of the situation, adding, “It is shocking to see this kind of automatic, mechanical labeling using internet hate group expressions.”
As the backlash grew out of control, the documentary director who originally raised the suspicion, Kim Hyun Ji, ended up deleting her social media account entirely. Before vanishing from the platform, she had stated that she hoped her critique would “leave room for reflection rather than anger,” but the fallout from her remarks ended up spilling over into an entirely different rookie group, Rescene.
Currently, RESCENE’s official channels are being flooded with supportive comments from netizens telling the members not to be discouraged by what many are now calling a completely unreasonable, misaimed witch-hunt.
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