Idol group member Won-i's dialect word sparks 'ilbe' controversy — and a political debate

Won-i, a member of the rising idol group Lisn who hails from Geoje in South Gyeongsang Province, has been caught up in controversy over her use of the word "museopno" — with former Rebuilding Korea Party leader Cho Guk and Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok both wading into the debate.

The dispute stems from a video on Won-i's YouTube channel in which a producer asked her "museopno?" ("Are you scared?") as an eerie atmosphere built up on set. Won-i replied, "Museopno. The lighting alone is scary."

The exchange drew public attention on July 1 when Kim Hyun-ji, an MBC Gyeongnam producer who directed the documentary "Adult Kim Jang-ha," posted on X (formerly Twitter) saying she was "deeply upset to see a female idol and a producer casually exchanging 'no, no' with each other."

The suffix "no" is associated with the far-right online community Ilbe (short for Ilgan Best), where it is used to mock former President Roh Moo-hyun. Critics argued that even accounting for the Gyeongsang dialect, the use of "no" felt out of place in context and raised suspicions of Ilbe-style language. Others pushed back, saying Won-i — who is from the Gyeongsang region — was simply using her local dialect and that there was nothing wrong with that.

As the controversy grew, former Rebuilding Korea Party leader Cho Guk weighed in Saturday on Facebook, writing that "there are people who defend Ilbe's practice of attaching 'no' to the end of sentences to mock former President Roh Moo-hyun, claiming it is also used that way in Busan and the Yeongnam region." He added: "As a rebuttal, I invite you to refer to the distinction made by someone from Busan" — a reference to his own Busan roots.

Cho said that in Yeongnam dialect, the question-ending particles "na" and "no" serve distinct purposes. "'Na' is used to confirm a yes-or-no answer, while 'no' is used to ask for a specific explanation of a situation," he said. He added that in his observation, "Ilbe mechanically attaches 'no' to standard Korean words."

Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok responded the same day on Facebook, rebuffing Cho for trying "to verify someone's ideology based on a single word at the end of a sentence." Lee said a 22-year-old idol from Geoje in South Gyeongsang Province had been branded with the Ilbe label simply for saying "museopno" in her hometown dialect. "Even when linguists explain that 'no' in the southeastern dialect is a versatile ending used not only for questions but also for exclamations and soliloquy, the stigmatizing does not stop," he said.

Lee also took a pointed jab at Cho, saying he had not expected him "to stir this kind of controversy over dialect — the same Cho who emphasizes his Busan roots and who used dialect himself when criticizing former President Yoon Suk Yeol, saying 'goma chiara ma.'" Lee warned that uprooting a word entirely in an effort to rebuke those who weaponized it would effectively hand the Gyeongsang dialect over to those very people. "That," he said, "would be exactly the victory Ilbe has always wanted."