Veteran trot singer Park Sang-cheol says his 2010 hit “Bbang Bbang” is enjoying an unexpected second heyday 16 years after its release, and he gives full credit to Rescene member Jenna for starting it. Speaking on the October 28 episode of the YouTube talk show “Han Jan Jurak” on the Yangrak 1beonji channel, Park described the song’s sudden return to the charts as something he never saw coming.
Host Choi Yang-rak raised the subject during the episode, asking how a song from 16 years ago had suddenly become a hit with younger listeners again. According to Xports News, which covered the episode on November 3, Choi noted that Rescene is a group everyone under 40 knows, and wondered aloud how the members had come to treat “Bbang Bbang” almost like their own song.
Park said the answer was Jenna. He explained that he had heard Jenna often sang the song, and that during the Chuseok holiday she performed about five trot songs, one of which was “Bbang Bbang.” The performance clicked with teenagers and listeners in their twenties, he said, and the response snowballed from there. As more young fans looked up the original and sang it themselves, the song climbed karaoke rankings and re-entered the streaming charts.
“It topped the karaoke charts,” Park said on the show, adding that the song also climbed high on Melon. Trade outlets tracking the run recorded a No. 3 peak on Melon’s adult-song chart and a No. 1 finish on TJ’s trot karaoke chart in the October 1 daily tally. Park said he was stunned by the timing, noting that the song had already been a hit 16 years earlier and that this second wave was something he had never imagined.
The spark was a trot medley video posted on September 18 to the YouTube channel “Hello, This Is Woni,” fronted by Rescene member Woni. In the Chuseok special, Jenna performed alongside Woni, Liv, Minami, and May in matching light-blue dresses, working through seven trot classics: “Yongdusan Elegy,” “Insa,” “Bbang Bbang,” “Nae Naiga Eottaeseo,” “Nongabeoryeoyo,” “Eomeona,” and “Chohon.” The medley passed 17.82 million views by October 13, according to trot outlets, while a standalone clip of Jenna singing “Bbang Bbang” drew more than 1.4 million views on its own.
The response went beyond views. Listeners who discovered the song through Jenna began seeking out Park’s original and singing it at karaoke, turning a viral clip into a genuine chart resurgence. It also drew reactions from the original artists of the other songs in the medley. Trot star Jang Yoon-jung, whose songs “Eomeona” and “Chohon” were also featured, left a playful comment on Jenna’s video, calling her a friend “like a tonic” and jokingly asking whether she was thinking of becoming a trot singer.
Park has already answered Jenna in kind. He recorded his own version of Rescene’s “LOVE ATTACK” and posted the video, telling viewers on the show that some people assumed it was made with AI. He insisted he sang it himself and edited the video personally. Toward the end of the episode, he thanked Rescene directly, calling himself a Remine, the group’s fandom name, and saying that Rescene was his reverse chart run. When asked whether he owed the group a meal, he laughed and said he would be happy to treat them if that is what they wanted.
His gratitude went beyond the chart numbers. Park said that because of Rescene, Korean popular music, which had felt somewhat divided between trot and idol music, seemed to have grown a little closer. For a singer who debuted in 2000 with hits including “Jaoka,” “Mujogeon,” “Hwang Jin-yi,” and “Bbang Bbang,” and who was elected the eighth president of the Korea Singers Association in 2025, the resurgence is a rare late-career twist: a song from his back catalog finding a brand-new audience through a fourth-generation idol group.
Whether “Bbang Bbang” keeps climbing from here is an open question, but Park’s message to Rescene was unambiguous. A viral cover gave a 16-year-old song a second life, and the original singer is enjoying every minute of it.
