As a Yoongi bias, I’ve been feeling really intense as of late. If you also like BTS then I’m sure you know why. The way that Min Yoongi releases content is just so intense. He drops so much material and I can’t even keep up. My nervous system is overwhelmed and I’m going through so many feelings.

Anyway, this means that I’ve been watching Daechwita and Haegeum together since it’s what Yoongi told us to do. He said that he wants us to watch Daechwita, Haegeum, and Amygdala when that comes out in one sitting so I’ve been watching the first two together.

I’ve noticed some little easter eggs that I feel like could have to do with astrology! I’m not sure if it’s my brain noticing just small details and reading too much into things or not but I thought I’d share them here.

The first easter egg I noticed is that, at the beginning of both videos, there is a shot showing a chicken. In Daechwita, it looks like a hen and, in Haegeum, it looks like a cock. Both chickens are in cages and they’re shown at relatively the same angle so it’s a really obvious mirroring. It’s a shot that doesn’t make much sense in the overall narrative of the videos so I think Yoongi wanted us to notice the chickens.





In the West, everyone usually knows their Sun sign if they know their astrology at all. In Asia, the zodiac sign that everyone usually knows about is their year pillar. Even if you don’t know anything about astrology you will probably know your year pillar because it’s used to define your age. I don’t know too much about Korean generational differences but, with a lot of Chinese elders, they will tell you their zodiac sign if you ask them how old they are instead of their age or the year. They expect that you will be able to know how old they are based on their zodiac sign.

Yoongi’s zodiac sign is the chicken! A lot of people think that this sign is the rooster or the cock but it’s actually a gender neutral chicken. 酉鸡 is how it’s written. The first character, 酉, is actually the more important one since it’s the name of the earth branch but the animals were added later due to influence from the western twelve animal zodiac.

In the past, Yoongi has mentioned that he is a chicken and that it was his 本命年 at one point for the Lunar New Year. He is also the only member of BTS who was born in 1993 and the only member of BTS who is a chicken. He’s definitely thinking about his zodiac and my guess is that he put the chicken in his videos because that is his zodiac animal.

However—chickens are not the animal that featured the most prominently in the Agust D universe. The animal that features the most prominently is the cow.

There’s the scene where we are introduced to black haired Agust D which takes place at a butcher’s market. We see a very memorable scene where someone is cutting up meat right after seeing a live cow.



In Haegeum, the beef is shown to us through a very prominent sign that reads “Asian Beef Noodles Soup” (I want to talk more about this sign later because it is really full of puns). So there is beef in both videos but what does the beef mean?



Well, the beef seems to feature really prominently in the message and narrative of the universe. We actually see another cow at the beef market, one that isn’t being slaughtered for meat but is shown pulling some boxes:



Later on, we find out that the tyrant king character has been beheading people. The boxes that the cow is carrying are actually full of human heads.

In Haegeum, the thief Yoongi steals someone’s chopsticks at the beginning which he uses to kill a man. Before he makes his kill, he takes a look at the chopsticks. The video ends with that same character using the same red chopsticks to eat a meat of, you guessed it, beef noodle soup. The design of the chopsticks also mirror the two stringed design of the Korean instrument haegeum which the song is named after and this mirrored a lot of the design for the album itself since it deals with Yoongi’s two personas confronting one another.





So, what does beef mean? What is Yoongi trying to say to us using the symbol of beef?

I think that beef has a meaning in AAVE which probably wasn’t lost on Yoongi. Seeing so much beef, I also wonder if Yoongi is aware of what beef or 牛B means in Chinese slang. It’s something that can mean anything from cool to fuck to an untranslatable feeling of mockery. But I think there is another reason why there is so much beef in his universe.

When you look at someone’s bazi chart, the pillar that matters the most is not the year pillar even though that’s the one that everyone knows. The year pillar usually represents the person’s lineage. The pillar that represents the person themselves is the day pillar. Guess what animal represents the earthly branch of Yoongi’s day pillar?



That’s right! He’s actually an ox or cow (Just like with chicken/cock, the most common English translation is gendered male for the animal even though the Asian character is gender neutral). Not only is Yoongi a cow but he’s an earth cow or Ji Chou day master. This will be the pillar in the chart that has the largest impact on him and he can be represented by an earth cow. (Keep in mind that the chart above has an unconfirmed birth time so the hour pillar can be different.)

The music video for Daechwita was filmed at Yongin Daejanggeum Park which is where some of the most famous K-dramas are filmed at. The palace where the tyrant king sits in the beginning of the video is Injeongjeon Hall which is supposed to be a replica of the real Injeonjeong Hall at Changdeokgung Palace. This is a 15th Century palace from the Joseon Dynasty. In other words, Daechwita is probably set in the 15th century.

Joseon Era had some pretty severe rules in terms of social classes which a lot of K-dramas play with. One of the rules is that the higher classes actually did not handle meat or do butchery. Butchery was considered to be a dirty job and a job for outsiders or lower classes. This means that seeing butchery in Daechwita is a clear message that black haired Agust D is either a societal outsider or aligned with the lower classes.

I think that beef noodle soup has a similar meaning in Haegeum. Beef noodle soup isn’t really a fancy food. It’s something that you can get in so many Asian countries as a street food. Recently, I was in China and I ate beef noodle soup at a street stall almost everyday. I had halal versions, hand pulled varieties, and glass noodle varieties. When I watched the Anthony Bourbain series where he goes to Asia, he remarks on the commonness of soup noodles too and how you can find it everywhere. It’s a basic and common meal that you can get almost anywhere to fill yourself up. It’s not something that you would get at a nice restaurant because it’s so filling but something that you would see on every street corner that you eat on the street.

Both Daechwita and Haegeum have various signals about money. The narrative of Haegeum is literally a heist where a thief steals what seems to be a corrupt cop’s money stash. The hanja that Yoongi chooses for Haegeum is also 解禁 which means liberation instead of 奚琴 which is the musical instrument. Sometimes, 解禁 is used in video games when a new level is released but other times it’s used to describe when a stock on the market is released for purchase. An English equivalent could be something like the concept of going public.

In Daechwita, black haired Agust D receives a key to the tyrant king’s palace that is made of red coral and jade. There is a banner behind him in that scene where he gets this key and the banner reads: “不宝金玉.”



不宝金玉 means something along the lines of don’t treasure gold or jade. It’s the first part of a line attributed to Confucius that reads “不宝金玉，而忠信以为宝.” The second part of the line actually tells us that loyalty is the only thing that is worth treasuring.

Coming back to earth and cows—what does all this have to do with the way beef is used in the Agust D universe?

Yoongi is an earth cow. Earth is actually the one element in Chinese astrology that doesn’t have an explicit gender. It’s not associated with any one season (water is winter, fire is summer, wood is spring, and metal is fall) but shows up between different seasons. Earth has an absorbent quality and is able to bring different incompatible things together. Earth is also seen as very resourceful since most of the things we need grow out of the soil but it’s not seen as a resource the way that metal or 金 is a resource. 金 is usually translated to metal but is also the character for gold. 金 is a precious metal. Earth is not precious. It’s a basic metal that you can see everywhere that you need. The resourcefulness of earth is in its ability to use and nurture everyday materials.

With the cow carrying the boxes containing human heads and Yoongi using the instrument that he also used for killing for eating, he’s making us aware of how money is something that can be used for both killing and eating. He’s making us aware of the crudeness of money. With the way he’s using beef in his videos, I think he’s also sending us a message about the inevitability of dealing with money. Money isn’t only about fancy things or luxuries or status. Most of those things don’t matter for everyday people. For most of us, money is the thing that we use to fill our stomachs.

Yoongi is sending us this message as a personal expression. He’s a cow and he uses a lot of beef in his narrative world. However, he’s not just any cow. He’s not a metal cow who is decorated in gold or a fire cow that is charging towards something. He’s an earth cow—a common cow that is resourceful and nurturing in the way that a comforting bowl of noodle soup might be at the end of a long work day.

There’s another astrological detail that I thought was really cute. In the scene where thief Yoongi is in his lair, he’s smiling at some goldfish. When I saw this I wondered whether he chose fish for this scene because he’s a Pisces. He’s worn a necklace that has the Pisces symbol on it before at an airport appearance so we know that he knows about his western zodiac Sun sign. If he’s using symbols from his bazi so much—who knows? Maybe he chose the fish intentionally too.



Before I leave you, I actually also wanted to talk about just one more easter egg that I noticed that doesn’t have anything to do with astrology. Take a look at the sign in Haegeum that says Asian Beef Noodles Soup again:



The characters below the English actually don’t say Asian Beef Noodles Soup at all! Let’s take a closer look at what they actually say. The largest characters in the center read 白雪糖面. The character 糖 which means either candy or sugar is also prominently displayed in the window of thief Yoongi’s lair:



So 糖 is sugar or Suga! Well, what about the other characters? 面 just means noodle but can also function as a pun. The cantonese pronunciation of 面 is min which sounds a lot like Min Yoongi’s family name. This means that 糖面 is actually Suga Min. It was so cute to go on Weibo and see C-Army discuss this. People were pointing it out and saying “he knows he’s 糖糖” or “he knows he’s sweet”. 糖糖 is a C-Army nickname for Yoongi.

The English at the bottom of the sign reads “Hand-made noodles, a 100-year-old craftsman.” 白雪 literally means white snow but the character for white, 白, looks and sounds a lot like the character for 100 which is 百. This means that there is mirroring between what the English reads and the Hanja but the meanings don’t match.

I think that the 白雪 part of 白雪糖面 is actually a reference to 白雪公主 which is Snow White. In the fairytale, Snow White has an envious step mother who becomes the queen of the land after Snow White’s father dies. Doesn’t that sound like the tyrant king in Daechwita? The tyrant queen in Snow White has a magic mirror that tells her that Snow White is the most beautiful in all of the land. This causes the queen to become envious and she sends a hunter to try and kill her step daughter. She tells him to bring back Snow White’s liver so that she can eat it. Snow White gets away and hides out with seven dwarves for a while before the tyrant queen finds her and gives her a poison apple. This causes Snow White to fall into a coma until a prince comes to kiss her.

There are so many parts of the Snow White fairytale that are also in the Agust D universe: there’s the envy, the mirror creating doubles, the royal tyranny, and the eating as a symbol of killing. There’s also the seven dwarves in Snow White. In the past, BTS has dressed up as the seven dwarves in Snow White. The number seven is also very precious to both BTS and Army.

When literally translated, 白雪糖面 means snow white sugar noodles and this doesn’t make a lot of sense because noodles are usually not a dessert but a filling and savory meal. If you look at the metaphorical meanings of all the words, I think that it means something like Suga Min who is like Snow White.

There are also other characters on the sign. One side of the sign has the characters 正統 and the other side has the characters 手打. 手打 really just means handcrafted which the English also describes. 正統 can mean authentic and can mean that the noodles are crafted in an authentic style but it can also mean something like traditional or orthodox. The characters also have a historical meaning where they describe the legitimate line of succession. Because Yoongi uses royal symbols so much I couldn’t help but read into this word and think that he’s saying that he’s using the phrase to describe the narrative of his universe as a story about succession.

Black haired Agust D killed the tyrant king in Daechwita but the tyrant king wasn’t a real king anyway (the dragon emblem on his robe shows four toes instead of the correct five toed dragon). Thief Yoongi who may be Suga since he’s shown with 糖 so much kills cop Yoongi.

The Snow White fairytale is also a story about succession since it’s about Snow White becoming the queen in place of the tyrant queen. In the fairytale, Snow White seems like the true successor because she’s kind and she’s also her royal father’s blood heir. However, I’m not sure that Yoongi is saying that the Agust D who survives at the end of Haegeum is the legitimate heir. Maybe this is what he’s saying and he’s trying to tell us that he’s the king (apparently, he does have royalty in his own bloodline) in part but I’m just not seeing that as the whole story. Throughout the whole story, he’s showing that the succession process is so bloody and has to do with stealing and murder and envy. He’s going out of his way to paint a bloody narrative. I think he’s using the word legitimate in the sign in a tongue in cheek way.

The sign reads 正統 (traditional, orthodox, authentic, legitimate) and 手打 (handcrafted). In a way, I think these are also Yoongi’s own values as an earth cow or Ji Chou day master. He’s telling us that he believes in authenticity and has a DIY mentality. We can really see that in his and in his musical process.

I also think that these words carry a double meaning. If 正統 is used ironically to say “this bloodiness is what legitimate succession look like” then I also think that 手打 is being used ironically here. There are a lot of ways to say handcrafted and 手打 is one of them but you can also say something like 手工. 工 or gong means labor or craft and 手工 would just mean handcrafted. 手打 uses the character 打 instead of 工 and 打 actually means “to hit.” The Hangul for this character is 타. In the past, Yoongi used a lot of sounds in his lyrics such as 둥 and 푹 in the BTS song UGH! to talk about violence. I can’t help but think that 手打 is being used not just to mean that the noodles are handcrafted but to be “to be hit by hand” or “using the hand to strike someone.” I think that 手打 means that the story of legitimate succession is one where the successor is killing the succeeded by hand.

Anyway, these are just my own thoughts about the Agust D universe with what we can see so far! Of course, we have no idea what the artist was really thinking about unless he shares with us his thoughts so I may just be reading my own thoughts and fantasies into small details here. We are also still waiting for the last leg of this trilogy, Amygdala, to come out and this video is going to show us how Agust D got his scar and integrate the storyline. This last video may change the reading of the last two videos a lot!