2 Days & 1 Night


2 Days & 1 Night is a South Korean reality-variety show that airs on KBS2 beginning August 5, 2007. 1 Night 2 Days is one of the two segments on Happy Sunday, airing at 6:25pm KST once a week. The episodes are also uploaded with English subtitles weekly on YouTube through KBS World's official channel. The show's current cast members are Kim Jong-min, Yeon Jung-hoon, Moon Se-yoon, Kim Seon-ho, DinDin and Ravi. The show's motto is "Real Wild Road Variety." Its main concept is to recommend various places of interest that viewers can visit in South Korea. Filming for every new trip is usually done 2 weeks prior to broadcast on KBS2.
1 Night 2 Days has gained much popularity and has garnered high viewer ratings. Along with The Return of Superman, the show's third season helped revive and maintain KBS2 Happy Sunday ratings, beating out competition from other major networks since its first episode.

Synopsis

Although there were multiple member line-up changes through each season, 1 Night 2 Days has mostly kept its format. The cast members take various trips throughout South Korea, including many offshore islands. While doing so, members also perform missions at a certain mealtime or point of the day to earn rewards and to avoid punishments. Guests can be invited not only by the production team but also by the members themselves if they meet the criteria of the episode's concept.

History

Before 1 Night 2 Days was first aired, it was preceded by Are You Ready which featured most of the 1 Night 2 Days members — Kang Ho-dong, Lee Soo-geun, Kim Jong-min, and Eun Jiwon. Are You Ready was canceled due to low viewership ratings and was replaced by 1 Night 2 Days after 12 episodes.
Singer and actor Lee Ji-hoon was offered to join the cast of 1 Night 2 Days but rejected the role to take a role on MBC drama New Heart instead.
1 Night 2 Days premiered with cast members Kang Ho-dong, Lee Soo-geun, Kim Jong-min, Eun Jiwon, Noh Hong-chul, Ji Sang-ryul, and Sanggeun the dog mascot on August 5, 2007. The show later experienced a number of cast member changes.
Season 1 broadcast its final episode on February 26, 2012.
Season 2 premiered on March 4, 2012 with returning members Lee Soo-geun, Kim Jong-min, and Uhm Tae-woong, who were joined by new members Kim Seung-woo, Cha Tae-hyun, Sung Si-kyung, and Joo Won. Kim Seung-woo left the show in March 2013 to re-focus on his acting career. He was replaced by fellow actor Yoo Hae-jin.
On November 24, 2013 1 Night 2 Days Season 2 officially wrapped up season two with a final goodbye from the members. Similar to the show's signature opening in which the members gather together to introduce the episode, it was fitting to see the members gather one last time to bid farewell to its audience.
Season 3 of 1 Night 2 Days premiered on December 1, 2013, with returning members Cha Tae-hyun and Kim Jong-min and new members Kim Joon-ho, Kim Joo-hyuk, Jung Joon-young, and Defconn. As of November 22, 2015, Kim Joo-hyuk left the cast of season 3 on their two-year anniversary, as he filmed his last episodes on November 20 and 21. Yoon Shi-yoon was then rumored to be in talks to join the show and officially became the new member in April 2016.
On September 29, 2016, Jung Joon-young left the show due to his scandal., but on January 7, 2017, a production member confirmed that Joon-young will return to the show, already having recorded an episode the previous day.
In 2018, the show received a Presidential Commendation from the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism for the show's effort of promoting tourism since 2007.
On March 12, 2019 Jung Joon-Young was permanently removed by the production team due to his involvement in the Burning Sun scandal concerning non-consensual filming during sex and covert distribution of said illegal videos). As a result of that, KBS announced on March 15 that they are halting the production and broadcast of “1 Night 2 Days” until further announcement is made. The chatroom exposé also affected members Cha Tae-hyun and Kim Jun-ho with allegations of golf gambling in large amounts, resulting in both of them quitting all their television programs, including 2 Days & 1 Night where they were cast members with Jung, with immediate effect. This marks the abrupt end of Season 3, unlike the two previous seasons having traditional farewell episodes. This also marks the end of Defconn and Yoon Shi-yoon's run with the show.
On November 5, 2019 Season 4 of the show is confirmed, with Kim Jong-min returning, plus new members Yeon Jung-hoon, Moon Se-yoon, Kim Seon-ho, DinDin and Ravi. The members filmed the first show on November 12, 2019 with plans to air the first episode of the season on December 8, 2019.

Cast change history

, KBS Joy has often aired re-runs of 1 Night 2 Days. U-KBS HERAT, a DMB, a digital radio transmission technology developed by South Korea, channel aired the show daily from Monday to Friday at 8:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. and recorded the show as one of the "fun to watch" re-runs. KBS World, the international broadcasting service provided by KBS, also started airing English-subtitled episodes of the show starting from Episode 35 titled as 2 Days and 1 Night.
With 1 Night 2 Days being well received, KBS Joy launched a "female version" of 1 Night 2 Days called 다녀오겠습니다. The first season aired between January 12, 2009 and April 29, 2009. The first season's members were gagwoman Kim Sook, Kim E-Z, Jeong Jung-ah, Bronwyn Mullen, Polina Lipina, and Kim Ji Hye. Season 2 aired from June 3 to September 16, 2009 with two members from Season 1, Kim Sook and Kim E-Z, and new members, actress and singer Yoo Chae-yeong, movie actress Seo Young, gagwoman Kwon Jin-young, and Kang Ye-bin.

Members and character

Current

Kim Jong-min
Kim Jong-min started off as one of the original members along with Kang Ho-dong, Lee Soo-geun and Eun Ji-won. Kim Jong-min had to leave the show due to his mandatory military service. He filmed with the cast until the very last moment before he had to leave. Kim Jong-min returned to the show as the seventh member after completing his military service in December 2009. He is now the only member of the original cast to continue participating in the show.
Yeon Jung-hoon
Yeon Jung-hoon is one of the five new members of season 4.
Moon Se-yoon
Moon Se-yoon is one of the five new members of season 4.
Kim Seon-ho
Kim Seon-ho is one of the five new members of season 4.
DinDin
DinDin is one of the five new members of season 4.
Ravi
Ravi is one of the five new members of season 4.

Former

Kang Ho-dong
Kang Ho-dong was the main MC of 1 Night 2 Days. He has won two Grand Prizes from the KBS Entertainment Awards for his work on the show. He previously starred in an early incarnation of the show, Are You Ready, but it was canceled due to low viewership ratings. On September 9, 2011, Kang Ho-dong left the show and temporarily retired from show business due to allegations of tax evasion, leaving the show with five members.
Lee Soo-geun
Lee Soo-geun was one of the original members who started off in the variety show Are You Ready. He was the main MC in season 2, taking over Kang Ho-dong's spot. On November 24, 2013, Lee Soo-geun left the show due to being under investigation for suspicion of online illegal gambling.
Eun Ji-won
Eun Ji-won, like Kang Ho-dong and Lee Soo-geun, was one of the original members, who started off in the variety show Are You Ready and appeared on every episode of season 1. Eun Ji-won left the show along with Lee Seung-gi on February 26, 2012, and later returned as a guest in an early episode of season 3.
Lee Seung-gi
Lee Seung-gi joined the cast on their trip to Pyeongchang, Gangwondo. He was the replacement for Noh Hong-chul who left the show due to medical reasons. In the show, he is nicknamed Heodang by Kim C due to being often empty-headed. He along with Kim C are considered often the brains of group. In a poll regarding looks, he was ranked first, followed by Sanggeun. Lee Seung-gi left the show with Eun Ji-won on February 26, 2012.
Uhm Tae-woong
Uhm Tae-woong's first appearance was during the 87th trip to Yangyang, which was broadcast on March 6 and 13, 2011.
MC Mong
MC Mong joined the cast on episodes 19–20 as the replacement for Kim Jong-min who left due to mandatory military service. MC Mong was the last replacement of the cast of the first season. MC Mong has been put on hiatus and did not take part in the filming on September 17, 2010 due to the investigation of his mandatory military service. The producers had made an official announcement that MC Mong's appearance will be deferred until a final judgment has been made and the rest of the five members will continue filming during his absence. Taking into the account of the viewers' feelings and opinions, the episode set to be aired on September 19, 2010 will edit MC Mong's parts as much as possible. This trip will be broadcast in one episode. They had already started editing MC Mong's parts since the September 12, 2010 episode. It has been confirmed in December 2010 that he has been banned from KBS.
Kim C
Kim C joined as a member on their sixth trip. He was the replacement member for Ji Sang-ryeol, who appeared in SBS Good Sundays Family Outing 2. Kim C was absent on their trip to Geochang, South Gyeongsang due to the death of his father. Kim C had decided to leave the show in order to devote more time to his music. According to sources, Kim C had originally intended to leave the show after filming the trip for Antarctica, however due to the trip being canceled, his leave was delayed. Kim C approached the producers of the show six months before and informed them of his leave. On the other hand, the members found out Kim C was leaving only two days before the last filming where Kim C called each member as he didn't want to interrupt the mood and bond they had for each other while filming.
Ji Sang-ryeol
Ji Sang-ryeol was the first member to leave the show after seven episodes due to filming commitments for MBC's drama Yi San. After Ji Sang-ryeol left, Kim Young-chul and Koyote's Shin Ji were special guests for the next couple of episodes before Kim C joined the cast in the next episode. A year later, Ji Sang-ryeol appeared as a guest on the show's 70th episode. Ji Sang-Ryul brought a guest along with him on this episode, which was the dog Sangdon, Sanggeun's son.
Noh Hong-chul
Comedy show host Noh Hong-chul left after fourteen episodes due to exhaustion and in order to focus on MBC's Saturday variety show Infinite Challenge. He was quickly replaced in the following episode with ballad singer Lee Seung-gi.
Sanggeun
Sanggeun, who had gained much popularity, was a Great Pyrenees bred-dog that usually accompanied the members on their trip. Sanggeun's real name was Herbie. When Sanggeun first made his appearance on the show, he was named "Sanggeun" by Ji Sang-ryeol. Sanggeun had appeared in the MBC drama Madame Ahyundong.
Kim Seung-woo
Kim Seung-woo was one of the new members and the oldest of season 2.
Joo Won
Joo Won was one of the new four members and the youngest of season 2.
Sung Si-kyung
Sung Si-kyung was one of the new four members of season 2.
Yoo Hae-jin
Yoo Hae-jin was the member who replaced Kim Seung-woo in March 2013.
Kim Joo-hyuk
Kim Joo-hyuk was one of the four new members of season 3. He left the show in December 2015, as he was getting more and more role offers and subsequently had a busy schedule. Still, he briefly appeared in many episodes after his departure. On October 30, 2017, Kim Joo-hyuk died due to a vehicular accident. The show later aired a special episode on November 5, 2017, as a tribute to his memory, despite the show's broadcast hiatus due to the labor union's strike.
Jung Joon-young
Jung Joon-young was one of the new members and the youngest of season 3. He was a contestant of Superstar K4. He usually took a lot of pictures of the food and set of the show to be put up on his blog. He temporarily left the show in October 2016 due to a scandal with an ex-girlfriend, but returned after almost 4 months. On March 11, 2019, in the midst of a huge scandal concerning non-consensual filming during sex and covert distribution of said illegal videos, Jung Joon-young was identified as an active participant due to leaked KakaoTalk chatroom messages of which he was part of. A day later, the show's production team decided to permanently remove Jung Joon-young as a cast member, with KBS subsequently banning him from all of the station's programming.
Cha Tae-hyun
Cha Tae-hyun has been a member since the first episode of season 2 after he had been recommended by the viewers. He has been considered as the informal leader of cast members in Season 3.
Kim Jun-ho
Kim Jun-ho was one of the four new members of season 3.
Defconn
Defconn was one of the four new members of season 3. He stated that it was a dream coming true being part of this show.
Yoon Shi-yoon'
Yoon Shi-yoon was the newest member of season 3; he joined the show as a replacement for Kim Joo-hyuk during the 207th trip.

Episodes, Guest Appearances & Ratings

Criticism of Season 1

During the early days of 1 Night 2 Days, the show was heavily compared with SBS's Good Sunday's Family Outing and MBC's Infinite Challenge, particularly because Noh Hong-chul was part of both 1 Night 2 Days and Infinite Challenge. However, the concept of the three shows is different. The concept of 1 Night 2 Days is traveling on a trip with families and friends, while Infinite Challenge is a challenge-based variety program with 7 men competing in games.
The episode which aired on July 6, 2008 gained a lot of criticism from viewers because of a smoking scene. On their trip to Baekdusan, Korea, a scene of MC Mong smoking in the bus was not edited and was aired. In 2004, all 3 major broadcasting stations, KBS, MBC and SBS, agreed to prohibit smoking scenes being aired before midnight. The variety program's directors made an official apology on July 7 for not properly editing the scene before airing the program and it will never occur again. This also caused a craze among MC Mong's fans because he promised on another variety show a while back that he would quit smoking.
Viewers protested about the "violent scene" on episode 51, which aired July 20, 2008. The scene was a hidden prank of Kang Ho-dong and Kim C getting into an argument to fool the new director who had joined the show. The production team stated that the fight was not intentional and it left good memories.
On episode 53, which aired August 3, 2008, viewers noticed a caption error when a local area in Inje, Gangwondo was incorrectly titled. Under protests from viewers, the production team posted an official apology on the Happy Sunday website.
Another controversy was made on the September 19, 2008 episode, which was filmed during the Lotte Giants & Doosan Bears baseball game. One of the issues was that the staff occupied a large section of seats for the six members. The other issue was not allowing other ticket holders to get to their seats. The production team has explained that it was to protect the safety of the six members and they did not mean to stop people from getting to their seats. The day the game was broadcast, SBS Sports said the visit of the 1 Night 2 Days team brought a positive mood to the people in Busan. On the other hand, MBC ESPN had negative remarks regarding the 1 Night 2 Days team.
The next controversy was on the episode aired September 21, 2008. Scenes of Lee Soo-geun smoking in the village was caught on tape and aired.
On the episode aired December 7, 2008, more drinking and smoking scenes appeared. It was deemed unsuitable for families watching the show with their children.
More controversy surfaced after the airing of the March 15, 2009 episode. It was said that Kang Ho-dong had uttered the profanity "XX-bitch" in one of the scenes. But the production team denied that Kang Ho-dong had said such a thing on the show and that it was just noises during the car ride.
Another controversy was when MC Mong's manager, Lee Heon-suk, said "육사시미", when it was more appropriate for him to say a similar saying that was of the Korean language.
On the episode aired October 4, 2009, some of the members met the 1988 Summer Olympics opening ceremony ring-boy, :ko:윤태웅|Yoon Tae-woong during their hike in the mountains. Viewers wrote on the show's message board that "it was a set-up" and "how can it be a coincidence."
Another controversy emerged when Lee Seung-gi was indirectly promoting beer he endorsed when he made his beer-can chicken on the episode aired November 11, 2009. Although the brand name was blurred at times, the name of the beer was still seen.
The second subtitle controversy was on the episode that aired November 15, 2009. The production team made an apology on the message boards. As for the re-runs of this episode, the subtitles have been changed.
It was announced that on March 9, 2010, the cast and crew of 1 Night 2 Days will take a trip to Antarctica to visit the King Sejong Station. Viewers' opinions were mixed, with some thinking it will be a great experience while others think they should not go. Nonetheless, the production team still had plans to leave on March 9 for the beginning of filming. A small group of the production team even left in February for Chile to prepare for the trip, but they had no choice but to leave and return to Korea after staying in Chile for a week. The reason was due to a blizzard that prevented them from taking a flight to Antarctica from Chile. The production crew had bought brand new HD cameras, lighting equipment and microphones to film the beauty of Antarctica and bring the best resolution to viewers. However, due to the 2010 Chile earthquake on February 27, the production crew had to search for alternate routes to get to Antarctica. Unfortunately, it was announced that the crew had decided to cancel their trip.

Media response and reception

On December 27, 2008 at the 2008 KBS Entertainment Awards, all six cast members were present at the award show and performed "No Matter What" by Park Sang-chul. The show took home five awards – Best Newcomer, Best Variety Show Writer, Top Popularity Award, Viewer's Choice Program, and the Grand Prize. In the Top Popularity Award category, three out of the four nominees were from 1 Night 2 Days – Eun Jiwon, MC Mong, and Lee Seung-gi, for which Lee won the award. The Viewer's Choice Program was based on viewer's votes through surveys and SMS. Happy Sunday ended up with 108.3% of the votes, and trailing behind them with 40.3% of the votes was Happy Together.
2 Days & 1 Night's third season received much positive response. The first episode of 1 Night 2 Days received very high viewer ratings of 14.3% when it first aired in December 2013. At the end of 2014, Happy Sunday segments wrapped up with ratings of 17.9%, followed by SBS Good Sunday with 12.1% and MBC Sunday Night with Real Men and Dad, Where Are You Going? In March 2015, KBS's Happy Sunday was in first place in terms of viewer ratings with 14.7%, beating out SBS's Good Sunday with 11.1% and MBC's Sunday Night with 8.4%.

Digital single

A digital single of the show's theme song was released on March 29, 2010 and was first heard on episode 135, which was aired March 28, 2010. The title of the song is called "Let's Go Paradise" and is sung by Gil Hak-mi and Han Bora.
On the episodes 486-488 which were aired March 5, 12, and 19, 2017, Season 3 members had been given a mission to make an OST for their 10th Anniversary. With the help of several musicians, they succeeded the mission. Producing 3 songs, namely , , and .

Awards