Woni, a member of girl group Lecerne. [Provided by The Muse Entertainment]
Woni, a member of girl group Lecerne. [Provided by The Muse Entertainment]

Woni, a member of girl group Lecerne, has used a regional dialect expression again after weathering a political controversy over claims the word was associated with the far-right online community Ilbe.

On Friday, Woni posted a video titled "Learning a Day in the Life of a Yankee" on her YouTube channel "Annyeonghaseyo Woni-imnida Jal Butakdeurimnida."

In the video, Woni and Minami spent the day together as a couple, riding bicycles and dining at a restaurant popular with young Japanese visitors.

When she took her first spoonful of soup, Woni exclaimed "mashinno" — a southern dialect word meaning "delicious."

The controversy began after Woni used the expression "museobno" in an earlier YouTube video, prompting Kim Hyun-ji, a producer at MBC Gyeongnam, to label it an "Ilbe-style expression."

Former Rebuilding Korea Party leader Cho Kuk then joined the criticism, escalating the matter into a political attack. Cho Su-jin, a lawyer and board member of the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation, also said the expression was Ilbe-style.

Public reaction, however, was largely dismissive. The prevailing view was that interpreting Woni's dialect as evidence of far-right sympathies was a stretch.

The National Institute of Korean Language and the city of Geoje both stepped in to defend Woni. In response, lawyer Cho Su-jin issued a public apology, saying she had lacked sufficient understanding of the dialect. Former party leader Cho Kuk, however, reiterated his position that the expression was Ilbe-style.


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