Highlights from RIIZE Fan Meeting

What happened

RIIZE's channel posted a clip titled "The Eve" and tagged #RIIZE_FANMEETING. The comments identify it as RIIZE performing 전야 (jeonya, "the eve"), an EXO song, at the fan meeting.

Why Koreans care

전야 (jeonya), the Korean name commenters use for the song, is the ordinary word for an eve, the night before something. The auto captions are garbled in places, but the lines that come through run in this order: 어둠 (eodum, darkness), then 다시 깨어나야 해 (dasi kkaeeonaya hae, "have to wake up again"), then 아침에 (achime, "in the morning"). So the legible words move from darkness to waking up to morning. These are auto captions, not an official lyric sheet.

In the Korean comments

Two comments describe Anton as two things at once. One reads, in translation, "Sexy. Pure. I feel something from Anton. He's so good." Another reads, in translation, "Anton is really the devil of The Eve, a devil wearing an angel's mask, so sexy," and spells the devil 앙마 (angma), a cutesy respelling of 악마 (akma, devil). A third says he dances well in a 쫜득 (jjwandeuk, chewy) way. Two other comments are about Song Eunseok. One says he was at center and calls him, in translation, "the authority on EXO songs," a title the comment does not explain. The other singles out his trembling hands and pleads with people to watch the first-show video of him in The Eve. Its word for the first show is 첫콘 (cheotkon, first show), which implies the fan meeting ran for more than one show. Two more comments are about how the fan meeting was put together. One reads, in translation, "RIIZE bringing a fan meeting up to fan-concert level is so admirable…", using 팬콘 (paenkon, short for "fan concert"). The other praises the running order, in which The Eve follows 보핍보핍 (bopip bopip) directly, and adds that even rewatching only The Eve is great.

What the words mean

쫜득하게 (jjwandeukage) is a playful respelling of 쫀득하게 (jjeondeukage), which literally describes food that is dense and springy to chew, like rice cake or gummy candy. Said of dancing, it is usually praise for movement that feels tight and elastic rather than loose. It is casual fan language, and the comment does not say which moves it means. 천사의 탈을 쓴 (cheonsa-ui taleul sseun, "wearing an angel's mask") is an idiom for someone whose harmless look hides the opposite, and on its own it usually carries a negative edge. Here it sits beside 넘 섹시 (neom sekshi, "so sexy"), and the cutesy 앙마 (angma) spelling keeps the tone playful, so it reads as a compliment, not an accusation. 기특해 (gitteukhae, "praiseworthy") is usually said when someone is pleased with what a younger or less established person has done. It sounds warm and a little parental. The fan-concert comment uses it about RIIZE bringing the fan meeting up to fan-concert level.