honestly it’s almost like our generation is set up to be lonelier & more anxious & more insane like imagine already being 20/30-something, the period of your life where you’re expected to be “at your prime”, in the middle of a climate crisis and a pandemic, under late-stage capitalism’s celebrity culture that conditions you to be as likeable & “marketable” as possible, where it seems like every lived experience should be watchable/profitable. & you look at the future you’re supposed to be working hard for & all you see is climate catastrophe meanwhile you scroll down a little & see a skin care ad that’s like “fight aging”. i haven’t said anything here that hasn’t already been said by someone else, but imagine being 20/30-something & normal
Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp being down for, like, the 4th time this year, while this hellsite keeps running jerkily but inexorably since the start of time
Hi, what's the deal with this song named Spring Day? I got a BTS stan telling me to look for its story I dunno where to look so, can you tell me? It's a good song but the video was confusing.
death tw / child death tw / drowning tw
in april 2014, there was a ferry boat in south korea called the sewol. a high school's entire junior class and their teachers were on a school field trip on this ferry, along with the crew and a few dozen other passengers. in total, 476 people were on board.
this ferry was overloaded, its cargo was too heavy and not strapped down, and the channel it was sailing through was too shallow and dangerous. the crew tried to turn to miss some rocks, but the ferry began listing (tilting sideways) because of the cargo shifting around from the hard turn. the ship eventually fell sideways and sank.
despite the fact the ship was obviously sinking, the captain ordered everyone to stay in their rooms, and, being scared kids, most of the people who listened to this order were the students. the captain and a few of his crew members were the very first people to get off the ferry, abandoning everyone on board. only three crew members stayed to evacuate the students (going against the captain's orders), and all three of them died.
in total, there were 304 deaths, and 250 of them were the students.
the recovery divers had all these awful stories about finding the bodies of these kids, like one where there was a boy and a girl still hugging each other, and they'd tied their life vests together, and the diver broke down sobbing because he had to untie them to bring their bodies up and he just kept thinking "they wanted to stay together" and he was separating them. the vice principal of the school killed himself, and four out of every five students in this graduating class were dead. just imagine, when you were in high school, if something happened where more than 80% of your classmates (and all of your teachers) were all just suddenly gone.
so, most of the survivors of the disaster were people who didn't listen to the captain's announcement, who came up to the deck and jumped overboard while they still could. of those people, almost all of them were rescued by local fishermen – NOT the south korean coast guard, who were very late and did little to help. now, this news story about the ferry was absolutely HUGE. i cannot overstress how big this news was; this was south korea's 9/11. it was the only thing on the news for weeks, and a huge part of that was how incompetent and useless the south korean coast guard was and how them being so late led to more deaths (and people calling for the captain of the ferry to get the death penalty)
at the time, the president of south korea was park geun-hye, who was very far-right and conservative. when people started criticizing the coast guard, she ordered the news to stop talking about the disaster, blacklisted any celebrities who talked about it, and denied how bad it was and how many people died. when she did speak about it, she just praised the coast guard. this got south koreans so fucking angry, they organized one of the biggest protests in world history and impeached her, and then she was arrested and is still in prison to this day (for corruption, among many other things). the disaster sort of awoke this huge public consciousness, where everyone felt responsible for it and wanted to better their country as fast as possible.
so, BTS and spring day:
BTS was on president park's blacklist of celebrities who spoke about the disaster, because they donated to the families of the victims. as leader of the group, namjoon said about that: "As a citizen of this country, I do believe we should feel responsible. We thought we could send our condolences if we could. We donated because we wanted to help.”
additionally, namjoon never confirmed it, but a lot of people say he wrote spring day about the sewol ferry disaster (edit: jin later confirmed the song is about the sewol ferry disaster). at surface level, the song is about young people losing friends (to death, to time, to anything), so a lot of people thought it was maybe from the perspective of the kids who survived and suddenly lost everyone in their class. a lot of the victims' families have used spring day in memorial services, and there's a reason this song is the longest charting song in korean music history (it literally has not left the charts since it first came out) – the sewol ferry disaster was this huge story that changed south korea forever, and regardless of intention, spring day represents how koreans felt about it. just sadness and loss.
one of the victims' fathers said: "Without anyone knowing, BTS quietly visited our kids through their song and video. They showed us their unforgotten hearts. Yae-eun would've liked it a lot, too."
in the music video, there are also a lot of references:
the neon sign says "omelas" which is a reference to ursula k le guin's "the ones who walk away from omelas" (which namjoon has recommended, and i highly recommend it too). this short story is about a perfect utopia called omelas, where everything is seemingly wonderful – except when people become adults, they're told about the secret to the utopia's success: one child is being tortured every single day. the utopia cannot exist without this happening. when the child dies, the utopia just grabs a new child and tortures this one until they die too, over and over again forever.
most people are horrified and disgusted, but then they come to terms with it and keep living in their utopia. one child being tortured is something they can live with, if they don't think about it. some people, however, choose to walk away from omelas, because they can't live with the utopia's secret. they don't want to be part of the utopia if it means even just one child being hurt.
i think this was included because to many koreans, south korea seemed like a wonderful perfect utopia at surface level – it of course has its problems like all countries do, but patriotism and nationalism are widespread. however, the deaths of hundreds of kids in the sewol ferry disaster was a huge wakeup call for a lot of people, that their utopia wasn't as perfect as it seemed, and by protesting and impeaching their president (who tried to say the deaths weren't so bad), they were becoming better and not denying the loss and injustice that happened. they refused to be like omelas and just accept and live with children being hurt for the sake of maintaining the utopia.
there's a theme throughout the whole video of being left behind, and then the shot of them all going up the stairs (trying to escape?) while others are left at the bottom (the people who couldn't make it out?), and the shot of jin in the laundromat that looks like a porthole on a sinking ship
jimin standing by the ocean holding shoes – for the belongings of the dead that washed ashore after the disaster, and to represent that loss and how all of those things used to belong to real living people who are all just gone now
the theme throughout of the passage of time, like including a birthday party in the "before" aspect – potentially to represent how none of those kids are ever going to have another birthday or grow any older, and the kids who survived lost all of their friends
i read somewhere that this shot had one outfit for every person that died in the disaster, but i don't know if that's accurate or not
and then the ending scene, which is self-explanatory:
"bogoshipda" (bo-go-ship-da) means "i miss you," so the next time you listen to spring day, listen for it. it's probably in that song a dozen times. it's the very first word in the song and it repeats in the chorus, because at the end of the day that's what the song is about
“Instead of the lost generation, a more appropriate name would be the welcome generation because instead of fearing change, this generation says ‘welcome’ and keeps pushing ahead”
titsay
kianamaiart
baratheonpilled
pixelskylines
izzy806
origamiaround
