Draw a Carrot

Origin

"Please draw a carrot" started in the comment section of the Naver webtoon Kill the King, written by Masatokki and drawn by Joana. The artist had a long history of missing deadlines, then at some point began uploading exactly on schedule for months without a single late episode — which prompted readers to joke that she must be locked up at Naver headquarters.

One reader left the comment "Artist Joana, if you are being held at Naver HQ, please just draw a carrot," and it rose to the top-rated comments. The next episode delivered: part 5, episode 23 included a scene of a carrot being sliced with a knife. The moment the artist played along, the comment became a meme, and delighted readers escalated with requests for the male lead in a bikini, for fruit, for a Welsh corgi. The bikini request was answered by naming the image file "bikini" rather than drawing one. The whole affair grew large enough to be covered by the press in September 2017.

What it originally meant

The skeleton of the joke is not internet humor but a real safety signal. Someone who has been abducted or confined, and who is contacting the outside world while the captor watches, keeps the conversation looking ordinary while slipping in a pre-arranged word or action to signal their situation. A person under coercion cannot answer "yes" or "no" truthfully, so the question is posed obliquely and the answer is read for the signal it carries. Dropping in something as incongruous as a carrot is what turned that grim original into a light Korean internet bit.

How it is used

• Aimed at anyone behaving unusually diligently or virtuously — a joking way of asking whether they are doing it of their own free will.
• As a greeting to a creator whose serialization or upload schedule suddenly becomes perfectly punctual.
• Typed into a livestream chat when the host is being conspicuously careful with their words.
• In variant forms such as "please wave a carrot," where "draw" changes to "wave" for anyone who is not an illustrator.

Sources

• Namuwiki, "당근 (derived slang)" — the origin of the carrot bit in evasive questioning under abduction or confinement, the Kill the King incident, the carrot in part 5 episode 23, and the bikini/fruit/corgi requests that followed
• Namuwiki, "Kill the King (webtoon)" — overview of the Naver webtoon written by Masatokki and drawn by Joana
• Nate News, "'Draw a carrot if you're being held' — the webtoon artist at the center of a Naver confinement rumor" (September 11, 2017) — contemporary press coverage
• Theqoo, "The webtoon artist who has definitely been kidnapped by Naver" — community post that carried the story