Dowbrigade

We really enjoy when stories bounce back and develop new twists and turns as time goes on. Of course, we would probably enjoy them even more if we had a longer attention span and a better memory.

Such a story is the saga of "Fu-king USA", the Korean punk anthem attributed, at various times, to the North Korean propaganda ministry, the South Korean CIA, the American CIA, and a bunch of teen-aged bloggers in Seoul.

We first reported the story, we were working off of the web site of one Rob Pongi, a sort of multi-media madman running around Asia and reporting on bizarre stories no one else is covering. He presented the complete "Fu-king USA" video alongside another rough video clip eulogizing Kim Jong Ill. Beloved Leader of North Korea. The crude animation of President Bush morphing into a demonic ape alone is worth the price of admission.

However, a couple of months later, the story was back again. A Blog called "Kim Chi and Me" did a linguistic analysis of the lyrics in the song, none of which we understood as we speak no Korean, and concluded they included words and phrases unused or forbidden in North Korea but common in South Korea. His conclusion – that the video had been prepared by the South Korean intelligence services to besmirch the video production capabilities and the musical taste of their northern brethren.

That’s where it lay until today, when we found that our original posting had been linked to, and was being mocked by, an American living in South Korea in his Blog "A New Way to Train" who claimed that "Fu-king USA" was a well known "protest" song composed in 2002 when the American speed skater Anton Ono had the Korean fellow disqualified after he had won the gold metal at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Apparently young people in Korea went berserk, and as a result "Fu-king USA" was a brief but ubiquitous hit.

Could this be true? We pondered this question for about 30 seconds before we realized how easy it would be to find out. After all, having half a class of eager Koreans has to be a stroke of luck once in a while. So this morning in the Internet Lab we showed them the video clip and waited for their reaction.

They immediately broke out laughing. Yes, they had heard about if before. Yes it was popular in South Korea immediately after the winter Olympics in 2002. But when we probed closer, only one kid admitted to actually having heard the song in Korea. The other’s said that they had heard OF the song, but that it’s diffusion was "discouraged" by the authorities and so this was the first time they had actually heard the lyrics. No one could tell me if the lyrics, as shouted on the purported "North Korean" video version are the same as the "original" lyrics when the song received its first burst of fame in 2002.

Any readers with answers to these questions, please step up.