Why Do They Say "Fighting!" in Korean Dramas?

I wasn't very far along my Korean drama journey when I heard my first character shout, "Fighting!" It was possibly one of the cutest things I had ever seen. At a moment of discouragement for the female lead, her friend smiled wide, pumped her fists into the air, and said this expression which could only possibly mean, "You can do it! You go girl!" I thought to myself, "I love that! Wouldn't it be nice if we said that in English?" And then I thought to myself, "But wait, that was in English." And then I thought to myself, "Wait, why was that in English? Where do Koreans get that?"

It seems that I was not alone in this chain of thought. I typed in my question to google and a whole slew of people asked it. There are many theories about where it came from, but no real historical answers. To save you the time of weeding through all the explanations, I will give you a concise list of the possible origins of "fighting" aka, "hwaiting" or "paiting" as used by Koreans.



1. It was adopted during the Korean War when Koreans were exposed to American troops
2. It surfaced in the mid 1980's as a cheer for Taekwondo athletes competing in America
3. The slogan "Korea Team Fighting" was promoted by the cell phone company KTF during the 2002 Soccer World Cup to capitalize on the tie-in with its name.
4. It was first used and spread by the kdrama Full House
5. It made its way into Korea via the Japanese
6. Koreans took the word from old Korean/English dictionaries and applied it in a new way

Basically, there is no real explanation for the use of "Fighting!" but I don't care because I love it and want to use it all the time in America! I think it's only a matter of time before it spreads here. If you know of any other possible explanations leave them in the comments.

So that leads us to the use of it in our blog title. We are "Kdrama Fighting!" because we want all new kdrama viewers to make a fun and successful transition into Korean drama fandom. So keep on watching and loving kdramas with our help. Fighting!

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