It started as a meme. Then they changed what gets farmed.
Track four on THIS & THAT started with a meme. “Aura farming,” the term that spread across the internet from 2024, is where this song begins.
Aura farming means cultivating an appearance of effortless cool through repeated actions. In 2025 it exploded when a video of Rayyan Arkan Dikha, an Indonesian boy dancing on a boat, went viral on TikTok.
Stray Kids took the meme and changed what’s being farmed. Not aura — career. The song reframes it as stacking achievements the way you stack items and experience points in a game.
And then they layered one Korean word on top of it. No-dong-yo (노동요).
Stray Kids “FARMING” — Korean Meaning & Lyrics Explained
Intro — XP Stacking Up
Yeah we farming every day, no sleep
Career on the rise Ssa-hyeo XP
Career on the rise 쌓여 XP
Career on the rise — XP stacking up
From the dirt to the light, yeah it’s lit
Pi-wa Ttam-i Man-deu-reo Naen Su-hwak Ain’t Cheap
피와 땀이 만들어 낸 수확 ain’t cheap
The harvest made from blood and sweat ain’t cheap
Gaming vocabulary arrives immediately. XP is experience points. Farming is a gaming term too — repeating actions to accumulate items, resources, or experience points.
Then the very next line shifts to agriculture. Su-hwak (수확) is the harvest, gathering crops from a field. Pi-wa ttam-i man-deu-reo naen su-hwak (피와 땀이 만들어 낸 수확) — game farming and actual farming overlap inside one sentence.
English “farming” started as agriculture and became a word for repetitive grinding in games. Stray Kids use both layers at once.
Verse 1 — No-dong-yo
We got one more No-dong-yo
We got one more 노동요
We got one more work song
Deul-li-ji A-na A-gun-ui Dong-yo
들리지 않아 아군의 동요
Can’t hear it — our side isn’t shaken
Sseul-de-eom-neun So-eum Tta-wi Jong-ryo
쓸데없는 소음 따위 종료
Useless noise — terminated
Beo-teun Click click clack boom
버튼 click click clack boom
Button, click click clack boom
This is the densest stretch in the song.
No-dong-yo (노동요, “work song”) — in Korea, nodongyo are folk songs sung during hard physical labor: farming, fishing, hauling. They kept a group in rhythm and made the work bearable. The meaning has widened since. Today people also call a playlist a nodongyo — the music you put on while studying or grinding through a task.
The moment “FARMING” calls itself a nodongyo, another use for the song appears. Put it on while you work.
Then dong-yo (동요) arrives in the very next line. Here’s what’s interesting: the last two syllables of nodongyo sound exactly like dongyo. But in the next line, that same sound becomes a completely different word. Dong-yo (동요, 動搖) means being shaken — wavering, losing your nerve.
No-dong-yo. Dong-yo. Jong-ryo. Three words carrying the sound forward. Work, don’t waver, and shut out the useless noise.
Pre-Chorus — We Don’t Know the Word Satisfaction
(You got plenty of time)
Nah Imma work work work every minute
(You should draw that line)
Nah Imma run run run till the limit
Geu Jeong-do-myeon Chung-bun-ha-ji A-nya Mut-ji U-rin A-jik
그 정도면 충분하지 않냐 묻지 우린 아직
They ask isn’t that enough — but we’re still
Man-jok-i-ran Dan-eo-reul Mol-la Ju-meo-ni Bin Geot Gat-ji
만족이란 단어를 몰라 주머니 빈 것 같지
We don’t know the word satisfaction — pockets feel empty
All day, every night until we’re satisfied
We’re FARMING
The voice in parentheses keeps pulling back. You’ve got time. Draw a line somewhere. The answer is the same each time. No, we keep going.
Ju-meo-ni bin geot gat-ji (주머니 빈 것 같지) — no matter how much goes in, the pockets still feel empty. That maps directly onto the feeling of farming in a game. The inventory fills up and you still need more.
Chorus — Good Night, Still Rolling
Good night, I’m rolling, rolling (FARMING, FARMING)
There ain’t no time for balling (24/7 we FARMING)
Good morning, I’m still rolling (FARMING, FARMING)
24/7 we
Rolling at night, still rolling in the morning. Time passed and the state didn’t change.
Balling, in hip-hop slang, is living large — flaunting money and success. They say there’s no time for that. Rolling and balling rhyme against each other, setting up a contrast in sound between enjoying the results and continuing to work.
Verse 2 — Jup Jup, Farming the Mine
Jup Jup Let this flow move on
줍 줍 let this flow move on
Pick it up, pick it up — let this flow move on
Yeong-gam-ui Won-cheon Take it, it’s raw
영감의 원천 take it, it’s raw
The source of inspiration — take it, it’s raw
Ey feel me, bust down dreams Gwang-san-eul Farming
Ey feel me, bust down dreams 광산을 farming
Ey feel me, bust down dreams — farming the mine
Stack Ssa-a Ol-lyeo Ga-bang Bu-pi-reul Neul-li-ji
Stack 쌓아 올려 가방 부피를 늘리지
Stack it up — expanding the bag
Get more items, Deul-lyeo Ut-gi-ni
Get more items, 들려 웃기니
Get more items — I hear you laughing
Jim-eul Bae-ro Bae-ro Neul-lyeo, U-rin Track Digging
짐을 배로 배로 늘려, 우린 트랙 digging
Doubling the load again and again — we’re digging tracks
Jup jup (줍 줍) — jup-da (줍다) means to pick something up, and here it’s doubled. You can hear the motion in the word: picking up, picking up, over and over. Korean internet slang uses jupjup for grabbing anything worth having — a good deal, a useful piece of information, a nice photo. It connects straight to the image of scooping up loot off the ground in a game.
Gwang-san (광산) is a mine. Farming a mine puts video game ore-gathering and actual mining labor in the same phrase. Ga-bang bu-pi (가방 부피) — expanding the bag — is inventory expansion.
Jim-eul bae-ro bae-ro neul-lyeo (짐을 배로 배로 늘려) follows from the bag and the items: the inventory keeps filling. The more you have, the heavier the load gets. In this song, even that weight stacks up like a result.
And then: “우린 트랙 digging.” Up to this point it’s been mines and items. Suddenly the object of digging is a track. The line between mining ore and mining music blurs. The mine imagery carries straight over into the studio.
Verse 2 (continued) — Our Heritage
Tam-eul Nae-do Ppaet-ji Mot-hae U-ri Heritage
탐을 내도 뺏지 못해 우리 heritage
You can covet it but can’t take it — our heritage
1-bu-teo Mo-a Geul-geo Take it, yeah that’s easy
1부터 모아 긁어 take it, yeah that’s easy
Gathered from one and scraped it up — take it, that’s easy
We made it, taste it
I-mi Neo-ui Gwi-e Bak-hyeo In-neun U-ri-ui Vestige
이미 너의 귀에 박혀 있는 우리의 vestige
Our vestige is already lodged in your ear
Tam-eul nae-da (탐을 내다) is wanting something that belongs to someone else. Closer to greed than envy.
Heritage and vestige carry the rhyme. Legacy and trace. What they’ve accumulated isn’t just an inventory anymore — it’s something they’ve built into the Stray Kids sound, already lodged in the listener’s ear.
Pre-Chorus 2 — The Harvest Sickle
Bin Geot Ga-teun Ju-meo-ni-reul Dwi-jib-eu-myeon Neom-chyeo-na-ji
빈 것 같은 주머니를 뒤집으면 넘쳐나지
Turn out the pockets that looked empty — it overflows
Gye-sok-hae Su-hwak-ui Nat-eul Deul-go Da Sseul-eo Dam-ji
계속해 수확의 낫을 들고 다 쓸어 담지
Keep going — pick up the sickle and sweep it all in
All day, every night until we’re satisfied
We’re FARMING
In verse one the pockets felt empty. Here, turned inside out, they overflow. Same pockets, opposite conclusion.
Nat (낫, “sickle”) — a curved blade for cutting grain. In a song packed with gaming vocabulary, an actual farming tool shows up. Picking up the harvest sickle and sweeping it all in is the moment the word “farming” returns to its original meaning.
Outro — Pick It, Dig It, Mine
If you want it then you go (FARMING)
If you wanna make dough (FARMING)
If you want something new? (FARMING)
Pick it up, pick it up, mine
Dig it up, dig it up, mine
Pick it, dig it, mine
FARMING, FARMING
Mine is the last piece of wordplay in the song. Grammatically, the most natural reading is possession — it’s mine. But gwang-san (광산), digging, and dig it up have all come before it. In English, a mine is also a place you extract ore from, and to mine is a verb.
Pick it up. Dig it up. Mine.
Pick it, dig it, and it ends up yours. Game, mine, and ownership overlap in one word.
What Does “No-dong-yo” (노동요) Mean in “FARMING”?
No-dong-yo (노동요) are traditional Korean folk songs sung during hard physical labor — farming, fishing, hauling. They kept workers in rhythm and made long hours bearable.
The meaning has expanded. Today Koreans also call a playlist a nodongyo: the music you put on while studying or grinding through work.
“We got one more 노동요” — that’s how Stray Kids frame this track. Another use for the song: put it on while you work.
What Is Stray Kids’ “FARMING” Really About?
“FARMING” starts from a meme and changes what’s being farmed.
If aura farming is about accumulating cool and charisma, what Stray Kids accumulate is a career. XP, items, inventory, mines. It begins in the language of games and arrives at labor and results.
And layered on top of that: a Korean nodongyo. A song people once sang in rice paddies and on fishing boats to get through the work, now wearing the vocabulary of game farming on a 2026 hip-hop track.
That’s why the harvest image lands — picking up the sickle and sweeping it all in. Game or field, it still comes down to work you do with your hands.
THIS & THAT is an eight-track album. Two more breakdowns from it:
Stray Kids “This & That” — Why They Refuse to Pick One
Stray Kids “RUN IT” — From a Small Room to the World
Stray Kids “After You” — The “You” Might Not Be a Person
Stray Kids “I Do” — A Wedding Vow Rewritten for Pain
Stray Kids “Way Out” — The Coldest Track on the Album
After the Grammys announced an Asian Pop category, this song started sounding like a prediction. Where does it go from here?
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CORTIS builds their whole identity on two colors. “RedRed” is where that starts:
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BOYNEXTDOOR’s “VIRAL” sounds like a breakup song. It isn’t:
BOYNEXTDOOR “VIRAL” Lyrics Explained — It’s Not a Breakup Song
Which line lost the most in translation for you? Drop it in the comments — I’ll cover it in the next breakdown.
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