Wearing an oversized bucket hat, silver chains and a black Miu Miu shirt, 82-year-old Park Jeom-sun gesticulates, her voice rising and falling with staccato lines about growing chili peppers, cucumbers and eggplants.
Park, nicknamed Suni, was flanked by seven longtime friends who repeated her moves and her lines. Together, they’re Suni and the Seven Princesses, South Korea ‘s latest octogenarian sensation. With an average age of 85, they’re probably the oldest rap group in the country.
Born at a time when women were often marginalized in education, Park and her friends were among a group of older adults learning how to read and write the Korean alphabet, hangeul, at a community center in their farming village in South Korea’s rural southeast.
They were having so much fun that they started dabbling with poetry. They began writing and performing rap in summer last year.
Suni and the Seven Princesses enjoy nationwide fame, appearing in commercials and…
