Super Junior's Heechul Recalls Karaoke Hits With Older Sisters on '20th Century Hit Song'

Heechul is taking viewers back to the songs he once sang on repeat at karaoke with older girls.

KBS Joy's "20th Century Hit Song" will air a new episode on June 26 at 8:30 p.m. KST, built around the theme "There's a Catchphrase in This Song." The episode looks at tracks whose lyrics broke out of the song and turned into everyday slang across South Korea.

The hosts open the show by listing recent Gen Z coinages like "yar," "eba," and "youngkk," then trace a longer line of phrases that once defined their own eras. "A lot of the words we used to say all the time actually started in song lyrics," the MCs note before diving into the chart countdown.

One track lands especially close to home for Heechul. "I used to sing this song a lot at karaoke with the older girls," he says. "I sang this more than Super Junior's own title tracks." The memory draws laughs from the rest of the panel.

The episode also revisits songs tied to specific cultural moments. That includes a track credited with sparking a nationwide younger-man craze, a legendary hit that turned a single word into a catchphrase everyone repeated, and songs that became the original source of expressions still used in daily conversation today.

Lee Mi-joo reportedly couldn't hide her surprise when one song's chart position was revealed, asking, "This song wasn't No. 1?"

Trends move faster than ever now, but catchphrases and the songs behind them have a way of sticking around. KBS Joy's "20th Century Hit Song" airs Friday, June 26 at 8:30 p.m. KST.