Daehongdan Potato
TL;DR · Origin‘Daehongdan Potato’ is a meme built on videos of North Korean children singing the song ‘Daehongdan Potato’. The original is a North Korean number abo…
Origin
‘Daehongdan Potato’ is a meme built on videos of North Korean children singing the song ‘Daehongdan Potato’. The original is a North Korean number about potato farming in Daehongdan County, Ryanggang Province; between verses boasting of the potato harvest sit passages praising the Kim family. Two recordings circulate in South Korea: one sung by a boy, and one by Sin Mi-song, a kindergarten child from Taechon County, North Pyongan Province. The latter opens with a host asking the child what she will sing, the child naming several songs, and those songs then being performed in order.
The clip first reached a wide South Korean audience through Channel A’s programme ‘Now On My Way to Meet You’, introduced as ‘a common North Korean children’s song’ in episode 32, broadcast on July 8th, 2012. The programme’s framing of North Korean songs was later criticised by the media watchdog outlet Media Today as interpreting them to suit itself.
Spread
It became a meme proper in the summer of 2013. A YouTube user going by Yubinsong uploaded a version subtitled with the lyrics transcribed exactly as South Korean ears heard them — a ‘subtitle terror’ edit — and that version spread widely between June and July 2013. Because the joke lives in the gap between North Korean pronunciation and South Korean hearing, everything but the comedy falls away, the original political framing included.
What distinguishes this meme is that the spread did not stay online. From the second half of 2013, primary-school children began imitating the exaggerated gestures and expressions of the child in the video and filming their own versions, and on January 14th, 2014 the daily Busan Ilbo reported on the craze among schoolchildren in Busan. The article carried both parents’ unease at their children singing a North Korean song rather than an ordinary nursery rhyme and an education specialist’s view that it was a passing fad. It is a case of an internet meme crossing into offline children’s culture and becoming regional newspaper copy.
Usage
- Humming the addictive refrain and shouting ‘Daehongdan Potato’ with no context at all
- Challenge videos copying the exaggerated gestures and expressions of the child in the clip
- A reflexive joke attached to any conversation about potatoes or potato dishes
Although the source is a piece of political propaganda, in practice the laughter comes from the strangeness of the pronunciation and the choreography rather than from the words. The passages of praise are generally cut, and only the refrain circulates.
Sources
- Namuwiki, ‘Daehongdan Potato (song)’ — the nature of the original song, the boy’s recording and the Taechon kindergarten recording by Sin Mi-song, and how Yubinsong’s subtitled video spread in June–July 2013
- Busan Ilbo, January 14th, 2014, ‘North Korean song Daehongdan Potato hummed by schoolchildren everywhere’ — online spread from late 2013, the singing craze among primary-school children, parental unease and expert comment
- YouTube, ‘#09 A common North Korean children’s song “Daehongdan Potato” – Now On My Way to Meet You E32’ (broadcast July 8th, 2012) — the early South Korean television introduction
- Media Today, ‘Channel A interpreted the North Korean children’s song Daehongdan Potato to suit itself’ — criticism of the programme’s framing
