Different anon from the last one, but the contrast between Jewel Box episode and the one where Hongjoong and Mingi went on Pungja's show really stood out to me.. even though she is a bit more rough and informal as a host, they seemed a lot more comfortable ! Granted, the topics discussed were different 😅
https://youtu.be/6mVRSw978io?si=SmFbhJFUJiPPiBfB
Pungja is good at her job.
I approached this was a lot of trepidation because I didn't know who Pungja was, but I will say that my initial impression is that Pungja is much better at being a celebrity interviewer than the Jewel Box guys. She's actually interested in what they have to say. And she's fun to talk to. Her jokes and jabs are friendly. She just seems really genuine and funny. And she's affectionate to them - both to Mingi for his strangeness and for Hongjoong and his irritability. Poor Sannie taking body blows for looking 'scary' is still done with a lot of warmth. This was fun to watch. Thank you for pointing me in her direction!
2. Lore Puncturing.
The parts that amused me the most are the parts where she and I separately came to the same conclusion about the Ateez lore - that it's specifically and rather simplistically a South Korean tale. In an essay about Yeosang, I summarized the lore thusly:
In our world, Ateez are 8 boys who are all trying to overcome some sort of problem or difficulty in their respective lives, who come together to form a dance-and-song team. This place looks and feels a lot like South Korea. In the other world, there are 8 men (for some reason they feel like men and not boys) who are the mirror equivalent of our Ateez boys, but in that world, they are artist revolutionaries trying to overturn this dystopia where people are not allowed to express or enjoy emotion or desire. This feels like a very sanitized version of North Korea.
Pungja is more succinct. She says: "There's a North and South Korea, and your lore is about South Koreans going to North Korea to say, Your culture is not right! You're doing it wrong!! You're dear leader is an asshole!! "
Neither Hongjoong nor Mingi know how to cope with this at all.
3. The other thing I noticed is the sheer number of people it takes to make a short cute little content like this:
Damn.
4. Also, this makes me want to get the super close up standing-only tickets for the July Seoul concert, bc Mingi looks like a giant among the Liluputians in this but I didn't get that impression from the March concert when I had general seating. HOW BIG ARE YOU MINGI, REALLY?
