Danso Murderer
TL;DR · OriginThe source is a video shot inside a car on Seoul Metro Line 7. It shows an intoxicated elderly man causing a disturbance while holding a danso, a small Korean bamboo flute. T…
Origin
The source is a video shot inside a car on Seoul Metro Line 7. It shows an intoxicated elderly man causing a disturbance while holding a danso, a small Korean bamboo flute. The footage was first uploaded to YouTube on May 9, 2015. The nickname "danso killer" comes from the fact that the object in his hand is a traditional woodwind far too flimsy to be a weapon. The form of a threat is all there; the implement is a flute. He looks dangerous and ridiculous at the same time.
In the video the drunk man ends up scuffling with a passenger who boarded at the next station — someone who walked into the situation with no idea what was going on. That passenger reported him, and he was taken to a police station. A young man who had been filming submitted his footage to the police as evidence. In other words, the video was never shot to be funny; it was a record made for a report.
Spread
Nearly two years separate the upload from the trend. The 2015 video only broke out in April 2017, through Facebook. Within a day of being posted there it drew 2.21 million views, and it kept circulating afterward, cumulatively passing 18 million.
It was not only the drunk man who drew attention. The passengers who stood their ground against him became talking points too, and the footage was parodied endlessly in webtoons, broadcasts and edits. A real assault case could become a meme only because, in the end, nobody was seriously hurt and the weapon was a bamboo flute.
How it is used
- For situations with enormous bluster and a negligible actual threat.
- As shorthand for disruptive behavior on public transport.
- Captioning any scene of someone brandishing an incongruous object like a weapon.
- Joking about a scene caused by drunkenness.
