#138. 아이엠그루트 -- I am Groot (???)

When the quarantine started, I had such big plans for it. With all the extra time I was going to save by not commuting, I was going to write more blog posts, read more books, do more work... But in reality, I was in a lot more useless Zoom meetings, I was writing more emails, and my energy level was just kind of low. I guess I just stressed out about not doing nearly as much as I hoped.

Nonetheless, I managed one thing on my to-do list. I watched all the Marvel movies in chronological order (highly recommended, if you haven't done it already). I fell off the wagon sometime around the first Avengers movie, and never got back into it until now.

I was motivated into it for a really stupid reason, actually. I was browsing the Korean internet, and I saw a bunch of comments that just simply said "아이엠 그루트." I knew enough about the Marvel movies to understand that it had something to do with Groot, but it felt like everything was taken out of context. But then, I hadn't watched Guardians of the Galaxy, so what did I know?

This is Groot (from Guardians of the Galaxy, vol.2)

So, what the hell. If I wasn't going to get back onto the Marvel movies during the quarantine, I was never going to understand another Marvel movie, so I just bit the bullet and started watching Iron Man.

10 movies later, I finally got to Guardians of the Galaxy, and understood that Groot is a space creature who can literally only say the words "I", "am", and "Groot" exclusively in that order. Then the Korean comments started making sense.

Here is a scenario of where you might see such a comment. Today, the Korean internet was rife with rumours of the singer BoA's possible involvement with drugs. It seems that BoA was sent a package with some sleeping pills and "slightly more serious drugs (according to the press release from the prosecutor's office)" from Japan, and she was called to the prosecutor's office so that they could investigate possible charges for drug trafficking.

This is her 20th year since debut, if you can believe it.

It will probably take much longer for the truth to come out -- SM Entertainment has said that BoA seemed to experience a lot of side effects with the same pills prescribed in Korea, so she asked an SM employee living in Japan to mail the same pills to her, and that it was an honest mistake stemming from not knowing the exact import laws on prescription drugs.

But if you know the Korean netizens, you know that the truth doesn't really matter, and that the haters will hate... a lot. BoA is currently receiving quite a bit of hate and malicious comments from the Korean netizens. Mixed in with these openly malicious comments, you'll probably find a bunch of "아이엠 그루트" comments if you dig through enough online forums.

Why? You might ask.

This is because in Korea, you don't have the full freedom of speech. If you speak ill of someone (whether it is the truth or not), the injured party can bring both criminal and civil lawsuits against you. While there are no guarantees whether they will win or not, they can make your life miserable since you have to appear in front of the police to make statements, and possibly also appear at the court. This can drag on for months, and in the worst case scenario, you can get slapped a fine (in the ballpark of about $1000 USD, from what I see on the internet), and possibly also have a criminal record.

This is 포돌이,  the mascot of the Korean police. Offensively cheerful-looking, I'd say!

To be fair, in most cases, things don't get that far; people usually settle and the hater ("악플러" in Korean) usually ends up paying some amount of cash to the injured party, and they agree to drop the lawsuit.

Nonetheless, it's a hassle, and most Koreans take extreme care to avoid being threatened with a lawsuit -- this means that they cannot write anything negative online (although the lines are blurry, people believe that even a valid criticism can result in getting sued). So, instead of actually speaking their minds, they type "아이엠 그루트," referring to the tree-man who can only speak these words. Of course, like many characters in the Guardians of the Galaxy (or "가오갤" in Korean, short for "가디언즈 오브 갤럭시"), many Korean internauts magically acquire the ability to understand the Groot-speak. Despite not having typed anything that would stand in a court of law, they have succeeded in insulting whoever they're in the mood for hating that day.

Some people also choose to type things like:

"읍읍읍" (onomatopoeic word for having your mouth gagged and still trying to speak)

or

"판사님, 저는 아무 말도 하지 않았습니다" (Mr. Judge, I didn't say anything)

and all of these have similar origins, that people want to insult someone without getting in legal troubles. For me, this is one of the cooler examples of the evolution of the Korean language. Societal customs, combined with modern references, created an entirely new meaning to a simple phrase! And it would totally confuse many foreigners who probably wouldn't recognize the context.