Content warning: This story mentions self-harm.
Suga knows how to tell a story well, and the music video for “AMYGDALA” proves it. Suga’s last Agust D mixtape, D-DAY, was released on April 21, capping off the trilogy that began in 2016.The 10-track album digs not only into various musical genres, but also into important issues such as as freedom of expression in songs like “Haegeum,” and Suga’s battle with his mental health.
Many ARMYs were moved by Suga’s poetic and vulnerable lyrics in “AMYGDALA,” and now, with the release of the accompanying music video, ARMYS are experiencing a range of emotions as a result of the storyline of the music video and how it portrays real life experiences that Suga has endured over the years. If you’ve just finished watching Agust D’s “AMYGDALA” music video and want to discover the deeper meanings behind all of the Easter eggs, I’ve got you covered.
Suga spoke openly about the car accident during his trainee days.
The major recurring image in the video is a car accident that Suga had during his trainee days before debuting with BTS.
In the video, Suga reenacts the moment of the accident in which he collides with another vehicle; however, each time he strikes the vehicle, he wakes up, implying that he still has nightmares about it to this day. At the end of the video, Suga flees from his bike, a possible allusion to the amygdala’s fight or flight response, and he tries to unlock a door, but is unable to. The final scene is open-ended, enabling viewers to speculate whether Suga is eventually able to reach the door and escape, symbolically representing him putting the past behind him.
Suga has spoken about the accident several times, including on his 2016 debut mixtape Agust D on the track “The Last,” where he rapped, “It’s all memories now uh they’re now memories / My shoulder which shattered / Thanks to the accident I met / During my part time job / The debut which I clung as if it was my life,” according to to an English translation shared by Genius.
During Episode 3 of the YouTube original BTS documentary series, Burn The Stage, Suga sat down with the other BTS members and fully detailed what happened that day, saying, “I was delivering [while] riding [a] bike when I got hit at the intersection…[When] I open my eyes, I see the wheel here, right in front of my eyes. The next day, I couldn’t move my shoulder. Because it fell out.” Suga went on to say that he kept his accident hidden from Big Hit because he was afraid of being dropped from the debut lineup. Fortunately, that was not the case, as Bang Si-Hyuk, founder of Big Hit Entertainment, patiently waited for Suga’s shoulder to heal and helped pay for his college tuition expenses in order for him to continue training without financial constraints.
Big Hit Entertainment announced via Weverse on Nov. 6, 2020, that Suga had undergone surgery to repair a torn shoulder labrum as a result of ongoing complications from the accident, putting him on hiatus from the group’s activities until January 2021, when he reappeared for the Golden Disc Awards.
“AMYGDALA” is possibly inspired by the novel Almond by Sohn Won-pyung.
Fans couldn’t help but notice a sequence in the music video in which Suga is shown taking pills that turn into almonds. The transitions appear random at first, but some detective ARMYs uncovered a connection between the almonds in the film and a book they saw Suga read in the past. In the first season of BTS In the Soop, a reality show in which the members of BTS explore nature during a period of relaxation, both RM and Suga can be seen reading Almond by Won-Pyung Sohn.
Almond is a Korean novel about a young boy named Yunjae with underdeveloped amygdalae, or a syndrome called alexithymia. According to the National Library of Medicine, alexithymia is defined as “an impaired ability to be aware of, explicitly identify, and describe one’s feelings.”
The almond in the book’s title relates to the shape of an amygdala, which is generally classified as an almond-shaped cluster of nuclei in the brain. The term “amygdala” is derived from a Latin word that corresponds directly to “almond.” Doesn’t it sound similar? Fans also pointed out that Yunjae is forced to eat almonds every day in the book as a failed attempt by his mother to potentially grow the size of his amygdalae.
In the book, Yunjae says of his almond-eating habits, “The reason I bother going through this ritual is not because I like almonds. At every meal of the day, there were almonds on the table. There was no way of getting around them. So I just made up a way to eat them. Mom thought that if I ate a lot of almonds, the almonds inside my head would get bigger. It was one of the very few hopes she clung to.”
This behavior is represented in “AMYGDALA,” where Suga is constantly eating almonds as a replacement for his medication, which could indicate Suga doing the same as Yunjae and hopefully growing his amygdalae to better protect him from his past memories, even if the exercise is futile.
We learn how Agust D get his eye scar in “Daechwita” and “Haegeum.”
“AMYGDALA” concludes the Agust D trilogy series by revealing the origins of Agust D’s scar, which can be seen in both the “Daechwita” and “Haegeum” music videos. Suga can be seen in “AMYGDALA” sitting on a couch in a dark room. As he sits down, he uses a pocket blade to self-inflict the scar above his eye.
Suga addresses the direction of the story for the music video in his Disney+ documentary, Road to D-Day. When referring to the “AMYGDALA” story, he explains, “This is the story of my life, you know. Before I reached the age of 20, I’d already had a lot of things going on in my life. I really want to talk about how I got the scar over my eye in this song. In a way, we’re responsible for all our own wounds and scars.”