It's JOKER-level good

Origin

"Gibuni jokeudeunyo" comes from a report aired on MBC Newsdesk on September 17th, 1994. The segment covered the changing dress of young Koreans then labeled "Generation X," and stopped a woman on the street wearing a beret and a crop top for an interview.

Asked by the reporter, "Don't you feel other people looking at you?", she answered: "No, I don't care at all. I dress the way I want to dress, and dressing like this feels good." The final phrase — gibuni jokeodeunyo, "it feels good" — came out sounding closer to jokeudeunyo, and that phonetic spelling became the meme's name. The delivery is distinctive enough that the clip is cited as a specimen of twentieth-century Seoul intonation. MBC later published the full original footage of the interview through its digital channel MBig News.

Spread

The clip sat forgotten for more than twenty years before being unearthed in 2016. After circulating through reposts that began on Facebook, it exploded on Twitter on May 24th, 2016 under the hashtag "#이렇게입으면기분이조크든요" ("dressing like this feels good"), with the driving tweet passing 10,000 retweets. The newspaper Kyunghyang Shinmun covered the phenomenon the following day, May 25th.

The reason the paper gave for the revival is the interesting part. To a generation that grew up after the 1997 financial crisis and became accustomed to recession and youth unemployment, the 1994 interviewee's total indifference to being watched — her flat assertion that she dresses this way because she likes it — landed as a genuine shock. In other words, the meme spread not because the outfit was funny but because the confidence was enviable. That is also why it reads today as a rebuttal to appearance policing and as an expression of self-affirmation that puts personal satisfaction above other people's standards.

How It's Used

• Declaring you'll do as you please regardless of how odd it looks to others
• A comeback when someone criticizes your clothes, hair, or decor
• Justifying a choice that can't be defended on efficiency or value-for-money grounds
• As a caption or title in retro content invoking 1990s sensibility

Sources

• MBC MBig News, "'Dressing like this feels good' — here's the original footage!" — full original 1994 interview
• Kyunghyang Shinmun, "Why is 'gibuni jokeudeunyo' trending?" (May 25th, 2016) — the May 24th, 2016 Twitter revival and its context
• Namu Wiki, "Dressing like this feels good" — the September 17th, 1994 MBC Newsdesk air date and the full interview text