Who Did G-Dragon Partner Up with for "Infinity Challenge Night Club Festival"?

The dice has been rolled, the mystical crystal has spoken and finally the partners for this year’s hotly anticipated “Infinity Challenge Night Club Song Festival” have been decided. The list of partners are a mix of safe choices, greatly anticipated choices, and doubtful choices, but you can hardly call the partners boring and you certainly can’t call the selection process boring either.

On September 7, “Infinity Challenge” aired the first episode for their bi-annual song festival project. This year the title of the song festival is “Infinity Challenge Night Club.” The title also reflects the general theme of the song festival, with their first recording being held in a night club with the members dressed up in retro/outdated clubbing clothes. It is here where they had their first meeting with their potential partners, a star-studded lineup including names such as Yoo Hee Yeol, G-Dragon, BoA, Kim C, Jang Gi Ha and the Faces, Rose Motel, and Primary.

Out of these names G-Dragon is of particular interest. He’s the first ever “Infinity Challenge” song participant to appear in more than one song festival, previously featuring in the 2011 “Infinity Challenge West Coast Music Festival.” During that event, he was (rather reluctantly) partnered up with Park Myung Soo to produce the song “I’m Being Flirtatious.” For this year’s song festival, he made his ambitions clear, telling the members that the last time he participated in the project, he got partnered up with someone he didn’t want.

In his interview he talks about how it was a really tough time for him, explaining that people in his own agency rarely rejected one of his songs. Yet Park Myung Soo rejected his songs 3~4 times during the course of the previous project. He has thus returned because there was someone that he wanted to work with. That member eventually ends up being “Infinity Challenge’s” self proclaimed fashionista and G-Dragon criticizer, Jung Hyung Don.

This year as well, Jung Hyung Don is quick to state his opinion about G-Dragon’s lively fashion, giving his “professional” opinion on the subject by saying the G-Dragon’s hasn’t evolved at all in the last two years and likening his style to the Olympic Main Road, known for being heavily congested and usually at a standstill. 

As for what sort of music G-Dragon was planning on showing off for this new music festival, he made it a clear to make sure he designed his song in such a way that “someone” couldn’t go out and sing their song at local events by using a G-Dragon look-a-like. This is a clear reference to Park Myung Soo, who has a previous record of participating in a local event using a look-a-like of G-Dragon and Park Bom to sing “I’m Being Flirtatious.”  

Eventually, the partner selection process begins with G-Dragon being first off the list. All the members vie to be partners with the talented artist and G-Dragon has to make a choice as the music changes over from dance to a slow song. His choice, however, shocks the other members as he walks over to Jung Hyung Don and starts to dance to confirm his choice of partner.

Both partners are speechless for a moment before Jung Hyung Don breaks the silence by telling G-Dragon “So you want to taste the joys of popularity.” In his interview, Jung Hyung Don continues to go on about how G-Dragon’s fashion needs to be completed and that is the one thing that he’s disappointed about.

Jung Hyung Don, however, acts less than pleased after being picked by his “fashion rival” G-Dragon, saying that G-Dragon doesn’t satisfy him and talking about how picky he is as a person, mentioning how we actually wanted to work with BoA instead. 

Jung Hyung Don later reappears during BoA’s partner selection and has to be dragged away by his partner G-Dragon. Jung Hyung Don at this point complains about how obsessed G-Dragon is about him and continues to playfully fight with his partner in the background. 

Other partners picked during the day was the Two Yoo couple comprising of Yoo Jae Suk and Yoo Hee Yeol, the Beauty and the Beast couple of Gil and BoA, the Reluctant Couple of Kim C and Jung Jun Ha, Couple by Fate Noh Hong Chul and Rose Motel, the Enexpected Couple Primary and Park Myung Soo, with Jang Gi Ha and the Faces partnering up with “Infinity Challenge’s” official kiddie, Haha.

Ratings for the show also increased this week. According to AGB Nielson, “Infinity Challenge” got 13.7% (+1.7%) while time slot competitors “Star King” and “Immortal Song 2″ got 11.5% (+1.4%) and 6.9% (-1.0%), respectively. This means that “Infinity Challenge” has come first time in the time slot for over 20 consecutive weeks, with this week’s rating being their highest in the last 15 weeks.

Other highlights from this episode include Jung Hyung Don’s version of Lim Jae Bum’s “Everyone,” Yoo Hee Yeol being completely rejected by the members when BoA arrives, Rose Motel’s Yook Joong Hwan’s Gorilla Impression, Jung Jun Ha being rejected by Kim C and Yoo Jae Suk’s rendition of Sunmi’s “24 Hours,” which I’ll include a video of below