An Identity No One Could Have Imagined

Origin

"An identity nobody could have imagined" comes from episode 125 of MBC's The King of Mask Singer, broadcast on August 20th, 2017 — the show's 63rd broadcast.

The moment in question came as the contestant masked as "I Came to See the Land, Columbus" unmasked after losing to "Mongolian Spot Restaurant Owner, Genghis Khan." Before removing the mask he sang Park Jin-young's "Elevator," and the face underneath belonged to the actor and singer Yang Dong-geun. The reaction from comedian Shin Bong-sun on the panel is what became the image macro.

What makes it work is that three things happened to line up at once: Shin's exaggerated expression, the on-screen caption reading "an identity nobody could have imagined," and the peculiar posture with one arm flung up and the other down. Remove any one of them and it would not have spread like this.

Spread

It did not take off immediately after broadcast, though. The scene was unearthed on November 1st, 2017, on the community site Humoruniv — more than two months later. Only after it was posted there as a reaction image did it spread to other communities and social media.

Variations

The most widespread derivative renders the pose in Korean consonants alone: ㄴㅇㄱ. The ㄴ is the left arm angled down, the ㅇ is the head and torso, and the ㄱ is the right arm raised. Three characters convey the same reaction with no image attached, so it circulated even among people who had never seen the clip. Compressing the meme into text actually widened its range.

Shin Bong-sun herself went on to appear in advertising built around the image, so the macro was reimported as part of the performer's own persona.

How It's Used

Reacting to a revelation you did not see coming
As a headline on posts where an identity, culprit or result is revealed as a twist
ㄴㅇㄱ, for conveying shock in text alone
Performing exaggerated shock to tease someone