What it means to 'some-tada'
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By Kim Ji-soo
Spring is here, interrupting what seemed like a ceaseless winter.
Blossom buds of various kinds are waiting to bloom on trees that line the streets of Seoul. But in the world of K-pop, a different sort of spring is underway. Amid the plethora of electro dance music that dominated K-pop during winter, the song “Some” by the duo Soyu x Junggigo was a memorable hit. In the smooth, romantic-sounding R&B track, singer Soyou’s clear voice and the singer/songwriter Junggigo’s crooning tone playfully delivers the catchy melody and lyrics.
“Recently, you seem like my girl, also my girl that is not my girl,” sings Jung in his attractive nasal tone.
“I seem like your girl, then your girl who is not your girl,” responds Soyou.
The two then go back and forth, in a lover’s tit for tat that explores the ambiguity of their relationship, to find whether they are friends or lovers.
But stacked against the powerful stage performances and the strong beats from other K-pop songs, “Some” didn’t portend as the chart-topper that it eventually became. However, the song has topped the charts for 40 days, as TVXQ, Girls’ Generation and 2NE1 released new singles. More interestingly, the lyrics from the song are spreading to influence other aspects of pop culture.
Firstly, the title “Some” is part of a colloquial Korean expression that an increasing number of young Koreans are using: “Some-tada.” By mixing first part of the English word “something” with the Korean word “tada” that means to ride on, it usually refers to that fluttering feeling of not knowing whether one is firmly in a relationship or not.
In the drama “My Love From the Star,” an actress who appears as a friend to the main character Chun Song-i drops the phrase when she airs out her wishful thinking: “Do Min-jun and I were in a ‘some-ta’ relationship.”
It’s not only the songs and dramas. The phrase is becoming increasingly used in webtoons, ads and even among texts. Culture critics say that more than anything else, the emergency of “some-ta” reflects the anxiety of the young generation of our times. The Korean economy may be doing better than expected; the Bank of Korea just announced that the nation’s gross domestic product grew by three percent last year.
The reality however is that the young people in their 20s and 30s are facing a dire reality where it’s as difficult to land a job as it is to get into a university in Korea, and even those employed are working on temporary shifts and on finite contracts that there is only anxiety for the future.
There are also even words to describe these generations — the so-called “880,00 won-generation” — and the “generation that has given up on three things” the three things being dating, marriage and giving birth.” It would be only natural that such generation becomes non-committal, as a way of survival.
These cultural trends are pointers useful in deciphering and navigating the society that we live in. Yet at the same time, these trends should be one of the guiding lights that policymakers pay attention to because they aim to increase the number of jobs.
The policymakers note that in addition to increasing the number of quality jobs they must ponder how to deal with the ambiguity the anxiety that the young generation faces, especially so because President Park Geun-hye has put priority on creating a creative economy to bring about more jobs and bring more culture into our lives.