I am truly sorry to the daughter who has such an unworthy father
TL;DR · OriginKo Seung-duk, a candidate for Superintendent of Education in Seoul in the 4 June 2014 local elections, was hit by an unexpected blow four days before the vote. On 31 May his …
Origin
Ko Seung-duk, a candidate for Superintendent of Education in Seoul in the 4 June 2014 local elections, was hit by an unexpected blow four days before the vote. On 31 May his eldest daughter Ko Hee-kyung (known in the United States as Candy Ko) posted a piece titled “To the Citizens of Seoul” on Facebook, arguing that her father was unfit to be superintendent of education. She wrote that he had cut off contact after their mother took her and her younger brother to New York for schooling. The post was shared some three thousand times and shook the race.
On 1 June Ko held a press conference, ruled out withdrawing his candidacy, spoke of the grief of a father who had lost custody amid his former wife’s powerful family, and suggested the post had been politically engineered. Two days later, on 3 June, at a campaign stop by Gangnam Station with the election imminent, he threw up his arm and shouted: “I am truly sorry to my daughter for having such a worthless father!” That moment is the source of the meme.
Why it became a meme
The line had the form of an apology, yet it was not delivered to his daughter but shouted into a microphone in front of voters. Combined with the raised arm and the near-scream delivery, the awkwardness of the format registered before the sincerity of the content. It is the familiar structure in which an earnest political moment becomes funny precisely because of its earnestness — ideal raw material for remix.
The turning point was a parody video. A YouTube user called the HOOT cut the candidate’s voice and gestures to an electric-guitar metal track; the edit took about three hours to make. It passed a million views within days, while the original campaign footage went on to exceed two million. The nickname “dun-dun-ttare” comes from the onomatopoeia produced when the sentence was chopped to the beat, and the clip also acquired the name “Abbi-metal,” fusing the Korean word for father with heavy metal.
How it is used
Because the original was a cornered politician’s explanation, the sentence is now mostly deployed as exaggerated self-deprecation. It suits situations where someone is pretending to be sorry and laughing it off, rather than genuinely apologising.
- Swapping the two nouns in “I am truly sorry to △△ for having such a worthless ○○” — a worthless team lead, a worthless senior, a worthless cat servant
- Defusing a mistake with theatrical anguish instead of a real apology
- Pairing the line with the metal edit to inflate something trivial into high drama
Sources
- Media Today, “How the legendary Ko Seung-duk ‘dun-dun-ttare, I’m sorry’ video was made” (10 February 2018) — the creator the HOOT, the three-hour edit, view counts
- NewDaily, “Ko Seung-duk’s daughter: a father who abandoned his own children is unfit to be superintendent” (31 May 2014) — the contents and timing of the Facebook post
- Kyunghyang Shinmun, “Ko Seung-duk’s daughter: ‘Father is unfit’ … candidate alleges political manoeuvring” (1 June 2014) — Ko’s press-conference response
