Kim Namjoon RM United Nations Speech Analysis

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Kim Namjoon / RM United Nations Speech Analysis by @msbeatrice_81 I don’t often write anything very lengthy here, since Twitter is meant for short blasts and not long essays. But I wanted to take the time to discuss how beautifully woven RM’s speech at the UN today truly was. Those of us who are ARMY are already familiar with the intense, passionate lyricism in all of RM’s work, and I think sometimes we become so used to it that we stop noticing just how incredible his mind’s way of weaving language into a tapestry really is. Today’s UN speech is yet another example of this, and I want to talk about why I believe it’s so astonishing. First, let me say that it is an honor to be able to analyze one of RM’s works in my own language. Since RM almost always writes first in Korean, we who have English as a first language and are not fluent in Korean rarely ever get to experience the impact of his craft firsthand. Instead, we must rely on the work of translators to interpret and communicate his work to us. Although our translators in ARMY are extremely talented, nothing can replace the feeling one receives when engaging with a work in the language for which it was originally written. Often the impact or the complexity of the meaning is lessened simply as a result of the challenges of translation, leading to a weakened or slightly confusing experience for us. Thus, having the chance to examine something written by RM for an English-speaking audience is a joy, and at the same time I feel a sense of responsibility to convey this analysis respectfully. First, let’s look at the early portion of RM’s speech, in which he talked about his childhood:

I was born in Ilsan, a city near Seoul, South Korea. It’s a beautiful place, with a lake, hills, and even an annual flower festival. I spent a happy childhood there, and I was just an ordinary boy. I would look up at the night sky in wonder and dream the dreams of a boy. I used to imagine that I was a superhero, saving the world. In an intro to one of our early albums, there is a line that says, “My heart stopped…I was maybe nine or ten.” Looking back, that’s when I began to worry about what other people thought of me and started seeing myself through their eyes. I stopped looking up at the stars at night. I stopped daydreaming. I tried to jam myself into moulds that other people made. Soon, I began to shut out my own voice and started to listen to the voices of others. No one called out my name, and neither did I. My heart stopped and my eyes closed shut. So, like this, I, we, all lost our names. We became like ghosts.

Kim Namjoon / RM United Nations Speech Analysis by @msbeatrice_81

Then, let’s look at the latter portion of his speech: "Maybe I made a mistake yesterday, but yesterday’s me is still me. I am who I am today, with all my faults. Tomorrow I might be a tiny bit wiser, and that’s me, too. These faults and mistakes are what I am, making up the brightest stars in the constellation of my life. I have come to love myself for who I was, who I am, and who I hope to become. So, let’s all take one more step. We have learned to love ourselves, so now I urge you to speak yourself. I would like to ask all of you. What is your name? What excites you and makes your heart beat? Tell me your story. I want to hear your voice, and I want to hear your conviction. No matter who you are, where you’re from, your skin colour, gender identity: speak yourself. Find your name, find your voice by speaking yourself. I’m Kim Nam Jun, RM of BTS. I’m a hip-hop idol and an artist from a small town in Korea. Like most people, I made many mistakes in my life. I have many faults and I have many fears, but I am going to embrace myself as hard as I can, and I’m starting to love myself, little by little. What is your name? Speak Yourself! The beauty of this speech is found in the way multiple motifs - the stars, heartbeats, and “naming” – are woven together to create the emotional pull that infuses this speech with so much power. In the quotations above I have placed what I feel are the relevant passages in bold type so that you can see what I mean by this. RM begins his speech by describing the innocence of his childhood, using the stars as a symbol of everything that is pure and sweet in the mind of a child. He looked up to the stars, he tells us, and he dreamed huge and soaring dreams. However, this childlike innocence was crushed when his “heart stopped”; as he explains, this was when he started caring for what others thought. RM uses the imagery of the stopping of his heart and the ending of his star-gazing to convey the intensity of what is happening. It is not only his dreams that died; in effect, he is telling us that as his dreams died, he himself was “dead” (we see this imagery made even more plain as he says “My heart stopped and my eyes closed shut”). The loss of the stars became the loss of himself. To make this even more impactful, he adds to these two motifs a third; he introduces the idea of “naming”. RM says he began listening to other voices at this time, but none

Kim Namjoon / RM United Nations Speech Analysis by @msbeatrice_81 of them were “naming” him. To make this worse, he himself had begun to ignore his own inner voice. A ghost can neither be seen nor heard; for RM, this loss of “naming” by both himself and others resulted in becoming that unseen, unheard thing. To be “named”, then, in this symbolism RM has created, is to be alive – to be seen, to be heard. In the middle section of his remarks, RM describes how music was his sanctuary and became the thing which led, ultimately, to his journey toward loving himself. He details the challenges faced even after becoming part of BTS, and the way his fans and the other members gave him the courage and the ability to succeed. As he continues to describe this journey and his determination to continue to live and grow, he makes a return to his original motif with this stunning, heart-shattering line: “These faults and mistakes are what I am, making up the brightest stars in the constellation of my life.” This is a gorgeous phrase, and it deftly weaves back into the narrative all those galaxies of stars which RM in his childhood looked up to with dreams in his head. Child RM looked up at the sky to see the stars above him and to dream impossible, fantastical dreams of heroic exploits. But RM is saying here that as an adult, he has made the choice to look up into constellations made up of his own scars, his own mistakes and pain, and to continue to dream, not impossible dreams, but dreams made possible by his journey through those very same faults and mistakes. This is self-awareness on a grand scale; RM is fully acknowledging that childhood innocence once lost cannot be gained, but that even our faults and mistakes can become as beautiful and inspiring as the stars in their constellations if we choose to accept that they are simply a part of what makes us who we are. After giving his audience this astonishing imagery, RM suddenly turns his message outward toward them, saying: “I would like to ask all of you. What is your name? What excites you and makes your heart beat?” Having described for us his own process of returning to life, he is challenging his audience to dig deep within themselves to do the same, and here we see him return to both the second and third motifs. When he asks “What is your name” and “What makes your heart beat”, he is saying to his listeners, “Stop being a ghost. Stop being this dead thing that is unheard and unseen. Live again. Make yourself heard and felt and seen again.”

Kim Namjoon / RM United Nations Speech Analysis by @msbeatrice_81 The final exhortations RM gives to his audience are these: “Find your name, find your voice by speaking yourself.” “What is your name? Speak Yourself!” By this point in his speech, the meaning of these challenging statements is clear. The symbolism throughout has come to its apex in these simple sentences, and the threads of each motif have been woven into a tapestry of emotional impact that now reveals itself to the audience. In “speaking” themselves, each person is making the choice to leave the world of ghosts and shadows behind. This “naming” becomes the awakening of life again, as the heart begins to beat once more and the eyes look up for the first time since childhood to recognize the beauty of the many constellations of experience that now exist within their own lives. There is one final aspect of this speech that I want to discuss, as it relates directly to BTS and ARMY. More times than I can possibly count, RM and BTS have used the symbolism of a galaxy to describe what ARMY is to them. This has always been one of the most beautiful images that appears in their writings and lyrics about ARMY, and it’s precious both to the members and to us as their fandom. I believe RM’s use of star imagery and constellations in his speech to the UN was not a coincidence. It seems to me that this image he paints of each person looking up to see the constellations created by their own experience is, for BTS and ARMY, compounded by the addition of millions of others’ constellations. RM has said so many times that he, “believes our galaxy,” a phrase which ties in so well with the imagery of his speech to the UN. I believe that RM hopes ARMY will recognize that when we choose life, when we stand together and look up once more, we are not seeing only our own constellations of experience. Instead, our lives are beautified, challenged and intensified as we also see the galaxy that is created when our own constellations are added to those of so many others. As BTS has written in the past, ARMY, you never walk alone…so Speak Yourself without fear, because together we are creating the most beautiful galaxy of all.