Many k-pop fans have reached out to me, telling me that they’re having trouble understanding the meaning of certain k-pop music videos. Thankfully, Kpopalypse is here to help! Read on as I demystify the latest music video from Young Posse and 10cm!
Young Posse ft 10cm’s “Cold” is a song that has an extended drama video. A lot of people liked this video, but just as many people were confused by it.
I don’t blame them, I was confused also! I had to watch the video several times in oder to understand what was happening, and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.
However I’ve finally worked it out so I’m going to share the information here now with you, my lovely readers!
Here’s the first shot, with Young Posse’s Doeun on the edge of a building.
Our second shot has Young Posse’s Yeonjung, looking at Doeun from a fair distance away and filming her. Clearly, Doeun doesn’t want to be anywhere near Yeonjung.
And our third shot has some guy (hereafter referred to as “Some Guy” to prevent confusion), a fair distance away from Yeonjung. He doesn’t want to be near Yeonjung either. Look at the huge distance they are all keeping. This is because Yeonjung has a body odour problem.
In the next scene, we flash back to the past a little. Doeun is taking the subway when some boys approach her aggressively. “You’re stinking up our class,” they say to her. Insulted, Doeun yells back “it’s not me, it’s that stinky bitch Yeonjung, don’t drag me into this”.
Some Guy appears, and rescues Doeun from the fate of having to justify her body odour to these guys with no sense of smell. The other guys don’t give chase because they can feel the stench increasing and they don’t want to asphyxiate, they assume it’s Doeun’s body odour they’re smelling, but…
…then Yeonjung appears at the top of the subway. “Oh, it was you we were smelling all along, Doeun was right, wow you really do smell, we could smell you coming even though you were outside” the guys say.
Jeonyung is plagued with self-doubt. While Doeun talks to the other Young Posse girls in hip-hop 101 class, and has generic non-specific fun times, Yeonjung keeps her distance. “Is my body odour really still that bad?” she asks herself. Meanwhile Doeun shares that she has just met Some Guy and he’s kind of cute actually.
Doeun with the help of her non-stinky Young Posse friends pretties herself up a bit in order to impress Some Guy. They also take some video because their label demands that they make TikToks every day for promotional purposes.
Meanwhile, Yeonjung wants to know the truth about how stinky she is, so she visits her friend, Some Guy. “Do I really smell that bad?” she asks, crying. “There there, it’s not so bad, just shower a bit more and you’ll be fine” replies Some Guy, downplaying the issue while being very careful to breathe only through his mouth.
“But I can’t shower! That idiot Kpopalypse will make all sorts of jokes about me not being hip-hop anymore, even though that stupid thing Bobby from iKon said about not showering being hip-hop is a decade old now and everyone’s forgotten about it except him!” Some Guy gives Yeonjung a hug and comforts her, while the amount of his upcoming dry cleaning bill to get the stench of her out of his clothes runs through his head.
Doeun and Some Guy then go on some dates. Of course the subject of their new mutual friend Yeonjung comes up. “Fuck, Yeonjung sure is a stinky bitch” says Doeun. “I know, I’m very concerned about her” replies Some Guy. He suggests that she needs some kind of help to freshen up a bit, like be forced to go through a car wash naked or something.
Doeun replies that it’s not that simple. We see a flashback to when Yeonjung was young. Doeun explains that she’s known Yeonjung since they were little, and when Yeonjung was younger she was so stinky…
… that her father wouldn’t even let her in his nice clean car, and would leave her by the side of the road.
The stench also made Yeongjung’s mother cry. She tried everything, super strength laundry powder, dry cleaning, scrubbing every inch of Yeongjung’s bedroom, even under her Poppin’ Hyun Joon posters, but nothing worked.
Eventually Yeonjung’s mother slipped into a coma as the stench was too powerful and overcame her nervous system, causing a brain hemmorhage. Yeonjung wears a locket with her mother’s picture to remember her, and prays for the day she recovers and is able to smell fresh air again.
The next day Doeun and Yeonjung have a chance meeting in the school corridor. It’s awkward and they don’t make eye contact, but they do pass by dangerously close to each other. Yeonjung knows she is stinky but doesn’t know what to do about it. Meanwhile Doeun is just trying to hold her breath long enough to get from one end of the corridor to the other.
However when Doeun gets to her class, her Young Posse friends quickly vacate the room. “You just walked by Yeonjung, didn’t you? We told you to stay away from her, you’re picking up her stench by walking too close, it’s contagious! Don’t do that in future, you’ll get it on us – go change your clothes and wash your hair!”
Doeun tries to call Yeonjung to tell her off for spreading her dirty scent on her…
Yeongjung gets the call but chooses not to answer. She just spent the last half an hour apologising to those guys she met before in the subway, she’s too exhausted to now explain herself to Doeun as well.
Doeun goes to meet her parents after school. “Boy you sure reek!” they say. “Yeah I know, it’s Yeonjung, I walked a little too close to her today, I’m sorry Mum and Dad.” “Hey, don’t worry, we’ll get you into the showers and get you a nice new change of clothes,” they reply.
Yeongjung is watching this from the other side of the street, and cries. It’s tough being stinky and alone, but she knows that this is the price she needs to pay in order to be hip-hop like Bobby from iKon. It’s lonely at the top.
There’s another flashback to when Yeonjung was a child and how contagious stink has always been a problem that has plagued her. She remembers how if she spent too much time with her brother, her father wouldn’t let either of them in his new car. “Walk to school or you’ll void the warranty!” he yelled as he drove off, leaving them both behind on the road together.
We then flash back to the present, where we were at the start of the video. Yeonjung films Doeun as she climbs down off the building to get away from Yeonjung’s stench. Meanwhile a bird in the area, caught up in the toxic gas cloud above Yeonjung’s head, plummets to the ground, dead.
Yeonjung thinks about sending this video to a self-help chat group, with a caption “look, even my friends can’t stand to be around me anymore” but hesitates. She’s been through so much humilation already, she’s not sure she can go through with it.
Fortunately, Some Guy appears, takes Yeonjung’s phone and sends the video on her behalf. “I know it’s embarrassing, but you need to take this problem seriously so you can get the help you need,” he says to her.
The credits roll, that’s the end of the story. The last image is of a drawing of Yeonjung’s family as a child, note the green gas clouds hovering over Yeonjung and her family, her mother made her include those for “realism”. We all love happy endings.
That’s it! Hopefully that clears everything up about this potentially confusing drama video! Kpopalypse will return with more posts!
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