Hey, K-pop students! 👋
I’m Student1, just another student who loves K-pop and wants to learn and enjoy it together with you.
If you’ve followed i-dle for a while, you probably already know that Soyeon really, really does not like vegetables.
For her solo comeback, she decided to turn that very specific dislike into an actual song.
The title is just as direct: “야채싫어송” — the Vegetable Hate Song.
Carrots, cucumbers, eggplants, green onions, onions, bell peppers, lettuce, chili peppers, cabbage… they all get called out. The music video takes the vegetable hate even further, with some pretty violent(?) things happening to them and even an adults-only age restriction. 😂
But when I started reading the Korean lyrics, the part I found most fun wasn’t the list of vegetables. It was all the Korean wordplay hidden inside their names.
The 콩 in 완두콩 turns into the sound of a knock on the head. 당근 gets connected to 당연해. 연근 somehow leads us all the way to 국민연금, Korea’s National Pension.
And Soyeon does not stop there.
If you only read an English translation, some of these lines probably look completely random. Once you hear how the Korean words connect, though, the jokes start making sense.
So this time, I’m less interested in which vegetables Soyeon hates.
I want to know what she’s doing to them in Korean. 😂
🥕 What Does “야채싫어송” Mean?
The title itself is pretty simple.
야채 (yachae) = vegetables
싫어 (sireo) = hate / don’t like
송 (song) = song
So 야채싫어송 basically means:
“Vegetable Hate Song”
or
“I Hate Vegetables Song.”
The chorus makes her position very clear:
당근 싫어 오이 싫어 가지 싫어
대파 싫어 양파 싫어 피망 싫어
상추 싫어 고추 싫어 배추 싫어
정말 싫어 완전 싫어 야채 싫어
She hates carrots, cucumbers, eggplants, green onions, onions, bell peppers, lettuce, chili peppers, and cabbage.
Then the verses start using the sounds inside those vegetable names to jump into completely different Korean words and expressions.
That’s where this gets fun.
🫘 완두콩 → “콩!”
One line goes:
완두콩은 머리를 콩 쥐어박고 싶어
완두콩 (wandukong) means pea.
The important part for the joke is the final syllable:
콩 (kong)
콩 can mean bean, but it can also work as a cute onomatopoeic sound for a little bump or knock.
Imagine lightly bonking someone on the head:
콩!
So Soyeon goes straight from:
완두콩 (pea)
to:
머리를 콩 (bonk on the head)
The exact same sound starts as part of a vegetable name and immediately becomes a sound effect.
🥕 당근 → 당연해
Next:
당근은 안 당연해
당근 (danggeun) means carrot.
Meanwhile:
당연해 (dangyeonhae)
means:
“Of course.”
or
“Obviously.”
There’s also an old Korean pun where people jokingly say 당근이지 because it sounds similar to 당연하지, meaning “Of course.”
Soyeon plays with that familiar sound connection again in:
당근은 안 당연해
The joke depends on how similar 당근 and 당연해 sound, so a straightforward English translation loses most of what’s happening here.
🪷 연근 → 국민연금
The same line immediately gives us:
연근은 국민연금
연근 (yeongeun) means lotus root.
국민연금 (gungmin yeongeum) is Korea’s National Pension.
The connection is all in the sound:
연근 (yeongeun)
연금 (yeongeum)
They sound very similar.
So we somehow go:
lotus root → pension → National Pension
in the middle of a vegetable song.
If I had only seen an English translation, I definitely would’ve wondered why retirement planning suddenly entered the conversation. 😂
🍆 가지 → 가지가지 → 싸가지
Then we get:
가지 놈 가지가지 진짜 싸가지
This line squeezes a lot out of one sound.
First:
가지 (gaji) = eggplant.
But Korean also has the expression:
가지가지 한다
which can be used when someone is doing all kinds of ridiculous, annoying, or unbelievable things.
Then Soyeon moves into:
싸가지
You’ll often hear this as:
싸가지 없다
which means someone is rude, ill-mannered, or has no manners.
So within one line, we get:
가지 → 가지가지 → 싸가지
The sound keeps repeating while the meaning keeps changing.
One eggplant somehow generated an entire chain of insults.
🫑🍅 피망 → 피 맛 / 토마토 → 토한 맛
These two work especially well together.
The lyrics go:
피망은 피 맛 나지
토마토 토맛 토맛
First, 피망 (pimang) means bell pepper.
But:
피 (pi) = blood
맛 (mat) = taste
So Soyeon pulls the 피 out of 피망 and turns it into:
피 맛
or:
“the taste of blood.”
Then the tomato gets the same treatment.
토하다 (tohada) means “to vomit,” and 토한 맛 (tohan mat) would mean something like “the taste of vomit.”
So the joke goes:
토마토 → 토맛 → 토한 맛
She’s basically taking sounds from the vegetable names and turning them into deliberately disgusting flavors.
Bell peppers and tomatoes have done nothing to deserve this, but there is apparently no appeals process in this song. 😂
🥟 Soyeon’s One Approved Vegetable(?)
After attacking vegetables for most of the song, Soyeon suddenly sings:
난 야채가 미워
아 네 야채 싫어
하지만 만두는 맛있어
She hates vegetables…
but dumplings are delicious.
There’s actually some Soyeon lore behind this line.
Soyeon has talked about her dislike of vegetables on broadcasts before, and she once introduced mandu (Korean dumplings) as a “vegetable” she can eat.
Yes.
Mandu is not a vegetable. 😂
But dumplings containing vegetables apparently pass Soyeon’s personal vegetable test, and that old joke makes its way into the song too.
So after carrots, cucumbers, eggplants, peppers, and cabbage all get rejected, mandu survives.
Apparently it’s Soyeon’s one approved vegetable(?).
🎤 “야채싫어송” Korean Pronunciation
This is one of those songs where the Korean pronunciation is part of the joke.
If you can’t read Hangul yet, here are the key lines where the wordplay really comes through.
💡 Student1 Tip:
These are written for singing along rather than as a strict Korean romanization lesson, so I sometimes prioritize spellings that are easier to follow with the actual track.
🎧 Pronunciation Highlights
Korean:
당근 싫어 오이 싫어 가지 싫어
Pronunciation:
Danggeun sireo, oi sireo, gaji sireo
Korean:
정말 싫어 완전 싫어 야채 싫어
Pronunciation:
Jeongmal sireo, wanjeon sireo, yachae sireo
Korean:
완두콩은 머리를 콩 쥐어박고 싶어
Pronunciation:
Wandukongeun meorireul kong jwieobakgo sipeo
Korean:
당근은 안 당연해 연근은 국민연금
Pronunciation:
Danggeuneun an dangyeonhae, yeongeuneun gungminyeongeum
Korean:
가지 놈 가지가지 진짜 싸가지
Pronunciation:
Gaji nom, gajigaji, jinjja ssagaji
Korean:
피망은 피 맛 나지 토마토 토맛 토맛
Pronunciation:
Pimangeun pi mat naji, tomato tomat tomat
Korean:
난 야채가 미워
Pronunciation:
Nan yachaega miwo
Korean:
하지만 만두는 맛있어
Pronunciation:
Hajiman manduneun masisseo
💡 Korean Tip with Student1
We’ve already spent most of this post breaking down the puns, so I don’t want to explain the same words all over again.
Instead, here are two expressions from the lyrics that are actually useful outside Soyeon’s war against vegetables.
😤 완전 (Wanjeon)
The basic meaning of 완전 is related to something being complete or completely.
But in casual Korean, it’s also commonly used for emphasis, a lot like:
“really”
or:
“totally.”
For example:
완전 좋아
can mean:
“I really love it.”
or
“I totally love it.”
Soyeon goes in the opposite direction:
완전 싫어
“I totally hate it.”
Her position is not particularly ambiguous.
👊 쥐어박다 (Jwieobakda)
쥐어박다 means to hit or punch someone, usually with a hand or fist.
The lyric says:
머리를 콩 쥐어박고 싶어
The funny part is the contrast between 쥐어박다, which sounds pretty aggressive, and 콩!, which sounds like a tiny cartoon bonk.
So the lyric is basically threatening violence against a pea…
with a very cute sound effect. 😂
💭 Student1’s Take
I already knew about Soyeon’s famous dislike of vegetables, so an actual vegetable diss track was funny to me before I even looked closely at the lyrics.
But once I started reading them, the Korean wordplay became my favorite part.
There’s:
완두콩 → 콩
당근 → 당연해
연근 → 국민연금
가지 → 가지가지 → 싸가지
피망 → 피 맛
토마토 → 토한 맛
These words have completely different meanings, but Soyeon keeps connecting them through similar sounds.
If I had only read an English translation, I probably would’ve been very confused about why lotus root suddenly turned into Korea’s National Pension, or why an eggplant was being accused of having no manners. 😂
And this is exactly one of the things I enjoy about looking up Korean lyrics.
Sometimes a line looks completely random in translation, but once you know how the Korean sounds, you realize there was a joke sitting there the whole time.
“야채싫어송” has a lot of those moments.
And after all those vegetables get roasted, somehow mandu is still standing.
Soyeon’s definition of a vegetable may need some work.
But I think I understand her vegetable ranking a little better now. 🥟😂