The dumpling incident: the fight over mandu that brought VMin closer

If there's one BTS fight that's earned near-legendary status over the years, it's the "dumpling incident." V and Jimin managed to have a serious falling-out over a question that sounds completely trivial today: whether to eat mandu during a dance rehearsal or wait until it was over. They've retold the story a few times over the years, revealing a bit more detail each time, and their dumplings eventually even ended up in a song.

V and Jimin were both born in 1995, and their friendship goes back to their school days. Today they're almost automatically linked as VMin, or "95z," but they've said more than once that their relationship wasn't always this smooth. Their personalities were different, they used to fight fairly often in their younger days, and Jimin was especially serious when it came to rehearsals and performances.

The dumpling incident happened in 2016, during a stretch that was pretty grueling for V. He was filming his first drama, Hwarang, while also working with BTS and trying to juggle filming with rehearsals and the group's other obligations. Years later, he explained that he'd finished filming that day and gone straight to a dance rehearsal without getting a chance to eat. He was so hungry he asked their manager to get him mandu.

The dumplings arrived, V started eating, and Jimin felt they should finish the rehearsal first. V later summed the situation up perfectly as a clash between two camps: the team that wants to eat after dancing, and the team that wants to eat while dancing. The problem was that Jimin didn't know what V had been through that day. To him, it looked like V was interrupting the rehearsal just to eat, while V had a day of filming behind him and was simply exhausted and hungry.

And that's how a few dumplings turned into a much bigger problem than anyone expected.

The argument escalated, and the other members eventually told them to leave the room and sort it out themselves. That didn't really help. V later admitted they'd just kept repeating their own side of the story, without really listening to what the other person was trying to say. Instead of making up, they left the room still angry.

In a later retelling, Jimin added another detail. What especially set him off was seeing V laughing on the stairs. Already upset over the fight, he took it as V laughing at him and flared up again. Today, he finds the whole thing funny precisely because he's aware of how seriously they took something so small at the time.

That's where the story gets even better. After the fight, SUGA took Jimin out for a drink, and Jimin ended up fairly tipsy. V and Jimin later met up in a park to finally talk it out without the other members and settle things. It was around four in the morning, Jimin was still tipsy, and V, of course, decided to film the whole thing. Years later he revealed he still has that footage.

That conversation turned out to matter a lot more than the dumplings themselves. V later said Jimin told him that he knew V was going through a hard time, that he might not be able to fix whatever was bothering him, but that he wanted V to come to him when things got tough, and wanted to give him strength. That stuck with V. It was only through that conversation that the two of them started to understand what had actually been going on on the other side of the fight.

We got even more context in 2023, in the official book Beyond the Story. V described just how hard the Hwarang filming period had been for him. He was the first BTS member to try acting, and he worried that if he was bad at it, the criticism would fall on the whole group. At the same time, he hadn't talked much about those worries with the other members. That's why the mandu story looks a little different today. They didn't actually have a serious fight just because one person wanted to eat and the other didn't. The dumplings were simply the moment exhaustion, hunger, stress, and two completely different perspectives finally exploded.

And then the whole fight ended up in music.

On the 2020 album Map of the Soul: 7, V and Jimin sing Friends together, a song about their long friendship. Among the school memories, shared dreams, and years spent together, their "dumpling incident" shows up too, described in the song as something that would be comedy material today. That's how ARMY first got confirmation that there was a real story behind the famous dumplings, after which the questions, naturally, just kept coming.

What's even funnier is that Friends isn't the only song tied to that fight. During FESTA 2020, V and Jimin revealed that 4 O'Clock, a song V and RM released for FESTA 2017, grew out of the same story. After the fight, V waited for Jimin in the park in the early morning hours, and that meeting, and the feelings that came with it, later became the inspiration for the song.

So somehow, a few dumplings gave us two songs.

V later said he's actually grateful for the whole incident, since it helped him get to know Jimin better. He recalled that they used to fight often, but that it was through conflicts like that one that they grew closer. What was serious enough in 2016 to stop them talking for a while is now something they can retell together and laugh about, at how important it all felt at the time.

Maybe that's why the dumpling incident has remained one of the most beloved VMin stories. It's not a story about a perfect friendship where two people always understand each other. Quite the opposite. Two friends fought over mandu, both stubbornly defended their side, got angry, went out for a drink, met up in a park at four in the morning, and ended up knowing each other a little better than before.

And the mandu, completely unplanned, ended up in BTS history. 🥟