Blast from the past: YG TREASURE BOX

aka the YG DUNGEON according to kpop fans because YG artists don’t make much music! I think in the first episode YG describes the treasure box and if you replace those words with dungeon, the sentence still makes sense.

So I forgot to post this post. I watched yg treasure box when the eps were coming out one by one and it’s been a long time since then!

here we go:

Only thing I can recommend on v-live (a website) is YG Treasure Box show on VLIVE because I don’t use that site very much. Tactually there’s also produce-x 101 content too. I think it’d be a fantastic resource for beginners and intermediate people since it seems to be full of daily conversation stuff and you have access to Korean subs and English subs and subs in many other languages. They sub all the talking since it’s closed captioning and you can rip the subs and learn from it using sub2srs or workaudiobook or re-listening via files generated by sub2srs etc. Check out this language log for more details on how to use vlive to learn Korean!
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=9646 <- link is probably dead

Ondemandkorea.com also has Korean subtitles for some of the content they upload but as far as I know there’s no way to download it. I think it’s stuff they uploaded in 2017 like for sketchbook. For me, I don’t have that many words to learn from korean tv so I don’t have as much of an incentive to download the sub file to learn compared to the me in 2012. This site is a pain with the ads but if you load multiple windows of the same thing you don’t have to watch ads or use ad-block. If you need a recommendation check out the documentaries (don’t think there’s korean close captioning for this one) https://www.ondemandkorea.com/sbs-special-e547.html

So it turns out v-livethe only the place you can watch YG’s boy group survival show. I have a thing with cut-throat survival shows. It is such a blessing that they went that route instead of a TV network for Korean learners. The videos come with subtitles in Korean (legit closed captioning every word that comes out of people’s mouths), Japanese, Chinese, English, and many many more thanks to the billingual k-pop fans out there. So far there isn’t a lot to mine from this show because I’ve seen so many kpop survival shows / other korean shows. I’ve mined more from the first 2 episodes of mix 9 (the closest thing to the PRODUCE show which reminds me the UNIT made me appreciate MNET more because that show was SOO Boring. watched it at 1.5x etc most of the time. i’M STILL glad I watched it though since I got to find out BI/RAIN’s personality/work ethic/style – it was very uncomfortable TV. felt like i got a glimpse of what the mblaq members had to deal with haha ) than this whole show. I think I looked up maybe 5 things and made 2 cards from all the eps?? This show is easy to understand. I love how it’s so easy to mine from it since I have Korean subs and if I really need help or confirmation I can reference the English or Japanese subs. ie download the episode, watch on potplayer, press my shortcut to copy the subtitle on the screen etc etc.

This was one card I made from the show

<-i swear on another korean show i saw them make a pun with oo dang tang but exchanging oo in hangeul to the hanja for cow. it was kinda random but cute.

One of the things I noticed while watching was all the direct word to word translations the Japanese trainees employed in their speaking. It stood out since they “corrected” what they said whenever they put up the korean text (They do this on Japanese TV too since otherwise they’re gonna irresponsibly display incorrect Japanese text on Japanese TV. For Japanese TV they also love playing around with the effects and colors of the text to imbue a certain mood. They can also use KATAKANA against the person! I sometimes wish something like katakana existed for Korean where they distinguish foreign words; even if it’s something as simple as putting dots on top of the hangeul etc. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has wasted time and effort figuring out simple english words/names like Martha or zolpidem (at least put sumeunjeh next to it so i can exert less EFFORT!!!) -r. Now that I think of it don’t they make the font of foreign names in korean books different from the rest of the text?). I was thinking though why do they need to learn Korean since you can make more money in Japan.

I like this Japanese expression a lot. It’s just very satisfying hearing an expression that fits the situation perfectly. I recall wakabayashi from AUDREY (odori… i didn’t know the meaning of their conbi name for years lol. there’s katakana for you) and nicole from KARA using it. So the former was cathartic and funny because it was perfect since he’s fluent in Japanese. The latter was lackluster because of nicole’s pronunciation/intonation/pitch accent of the word. Her usage was correct but the delivery was lacking. so the only thing that came to mind was Nicole is really putting effort into improving her Japanese. Cool… instead of me just enjoying the convo. The mispronunciation stands out that much more when people you use fancy expressions or big/uncommon words etc etc. Though in all seriousness Nicole from KARA improved by leaps and bounds. I think she’s trying to work in Japan ~ happy for her.

few examples:

오디션을 받았다
가수에되고싶다

Well at least korean peeps have no problem understanding what they mean.

Those instances are always amusing to me. I felt worried and bad for the Japanese trainees since they didn’t seem to provide a translator. If they don’t understand what YG says they can’t help it. There was this one scene in ep 3 where YG asks as a yes or no question of “Are the fellow trainees hard to keep in line” (something like that, I’m going off my memory) and the Japanese trainee answered “Yes” and then everyone laughed and it’s either because the answer is funny or the trainee answered the question without understanding it or maybe he misanswered because he was nervous. I could not tell since the answer could be interpreted as funny. I am assuming they understand Korean better than they can speak it.

In episode 2 I was so impressed with the Japanese guy’s English rap because I have realistic, low expectations whenever it involves Japanese people speaking English. I think I was even more impressed with the cute korean kid who rapped.