Hip President

Origin

"Hip-tongryeong" combines "hip-hop" with "president" and is the nickname given to the singer Jang Moon-bok. It starts with his appearance in the Daegu preliminary round of Mnet's "Superstar K2," broadcast on August 6, 2010 (Namuwiki, "Jang Moon-bok").

What drew attention was the interview more than the singing. He diagnosed Korean hip-hop as lost between artistry and mass appeal, then announced his ambition to show the public what he could do and contribute to the genre's development. The song he then performed was rapper Outsider's "Speed Racer," reinterpreted in his own style. The gap between the weight of the diagnosis and the performance that followed made him a talking point immediately after broadcast, and "hip-tongryeong" is the nickname that compressed that gap.

Spread

Jang was eliminated in the regional round, but online that is precisely when he began circulating. The interview footage and the stage clip were replayed endlessly across communities and spawned parodies, leaving him not as one episode's contestant but as one of the defining talking-point figures of Korean audition television.

There is an epilogue. Six years after that elimination, Jang signed with O&O Entertainment — the agency of Outsider, whose song he had performed at the audition — and debuted properly as a solo artist. The person who had been the object of mockery ended up at the label of the artist behind the very song that made him one, and once that became known the meme shifted from teasing toward something more like a narrative.