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Doorbell song, chapaguri from 'Parasite' become talk of town

Feb. 11, 2020 - 11:14 By Yonhap
(CJ ENM)

With the Oscar-winning film "Parasite" creating a lot of buzz throughout the world, a short catchy song and a recipe from the sensational movie are also sweeping the internet.

The so-called Jessica jingle is a line that the character Ki-jung, played Park So-dam, sings with her brother Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) in order to remember her false identity before ringing the doorbell of a rich family's house.

In the movie, the wily siblings sweet-talk the affluent Park family into employing them and their parents so that they can live off them.

"Jessica, Only Child, Illinois, Chicago," they sing in front of the door of the uptown mansion to recall the details of their fake identities before entering the house.

The six-second phrase is based on the famous children's song "Dokdo is Our Land," whose tune is frequently used by Korean students to help them memorize information.

Director Bong Joon-ho wrote the Jessica jingle, while Han Jin-won, co-author of "Parasite," wrote second and third verses that did not appear in the movie.

The film's US distributor, Neon, has made an audio clip available to download as a ringtone and posted video footage of Park So-dam teaching the "Jessica Jingle" on Twitter.

At the same time, a recipe for "chapaguri," a mixture of Chapaghetti, instant black bean noodles, and Neoguri, spicy Korean udon-like noodles, has gone viral on the internet.

In the movie, Mrs. Park calls her housekeeper to prepare a bowl of chapaguri for her young son while driving back from a camping trip. The housekeeper, the mother of the down-and-out siblings, cooks the dish with cubes of sirloin added.

Bong said he tried to show the class division between rich and poor through the dish, a mixture of two very popular cheap instant noodles. It is popular among kids no matter what class they come from, but the wealthy family in the film does not enjoy chapaguri as it is.

"Even the rich kid, he's still a kid. That's why he loves this dish," Bong said in an interview in Los Angeles in October last year, referring to the son in the family. "But the mom can't accept the fact that her son eats such a cheap dish. So she has to add the topping fit for the rich, sirloin." (Yonhap)