a few years later... #TWS

What happened

The K-pop group TWS posted a video titled "a few years later..." on its channel. The description is only two hashtags, #투어스 (tueoseu, TWS in Hangul) and #247WithUs. The auto-captions pick up just an English lyric about keeping a picture in a wallet.

In the Korean comments

These are 15 stored Korean-language comments, highest-liked first, out of 309 comments on the video when they were collected. They show what these 15 say, not what viewers in general think. All 15 are affectionate and none criticizes anything. What is specific is that six of them reach for school days, school uniforms, graduation or the word "baby" to talk about the members. One reads, in translation, "They still look like babies who haven't graduated yet.. and it's already an all-adult group.. But they've all grown up so well and I'm so proud!!! So in the eyes of the 42s they're still babies, babies for life." (42 is TWS's fandom name.) Another reads, in translation, "Ahh, seeing this, it suddenly hit me all over again that everyone in TWS is an adult now, and I felt moved? choked up?" The most-liked comment, with 249 likes, is about the member Kyungmin alone. In translation it reads, "Kyungmin is completely yesterday, it's yesterday...". Another says, in translation, "It's not for nothing that 'graduation-ceremony Lee Kyungmin' is famous." It uses 졸업식 이경민 (joreopsik Lee Kyungmin, "Lee Kyungmin at the graduation ceremony") as a reference it does not explain. A different comment praises the label rather than the members. In translation: "How did they gather six of them, Pledis is seriously amazing." The word it uses for the label is 플디 (peuldi, fan shorthand for Pledis, the group's label).

What the words mean

Two expressions carry the mood of these comments. The first is 아가 (aga, baby). Literally it means an infant or small child. Here it is an affectionate label, used even while other comments note that the members are now all adults. One comment says they are 평생 아가 (pyeongsaeng aga, baby for life) to the fans, and another calls them cute 강아지들 (gangajideul, puppies). It is not a statement about age. It is fan-to-idol tenderness, protective and a little parental. The second is 완전 어제네 어제야 (wanjeon eojene eojeya, "it's totally yesterday, yesterday"), the phrase in the most-liked comment. Literally it calls a person "yesterday". Set beside a title that says "a few years later...", it reads most naturally as "for Kyungmin, no time seems to have passed". The comment does not spell that out, so this is a reading of the phrase, not something the comment states. The register is casual, exaggerated and admiring.