For our last meeting before Thanksgiving, Somyung and I decided to have an easy day by watching Korean Englishmen videos. I actually was well aware of the Korean Englishmen channel before. I knew all of the hosts including “조쉬”, “올리", “가비,” and e.t.c. For our meeting, Somyung asked me to choose any video I wanted to watch. I chose the video with “하하.” The reason is that I knew “하하" also known as “HaHa,” from an extremely popular variety show called Runningman. HaHa was one of the casts in Runningman and he was one of my favorite comedians in Korea which is why I chose this video to watch. The setting of this video was in HaHa’s own barbeque restaurant and it was cool to see a famous comedian own his own restaurants as well. Somyung and I searched up to see if other famous celebrities owned their own shops and we discovered that this was a very common thing for Korean celebrities. For instance, a famous rapper named “로꼬" owned a famous burger joint and kpop stars like G-Dragon and Kim Jong Kook also owned their own cafes. I do not think this is a common thing here in the States. We see very few celebrities opening up their own restaurants/cafes, so it was cool to see that such a famous celebrity like HaHa had his own restaurant that he carefully managed and oversaw. In the video, HaHa was also talking about this idea of “정" pronounced “Jeong.” Somyung and I tried to find a translation for it but realized there was not a direct translation to this word. It is similar to “aegyo” in a way that it also does not have a direct translation in English. From the video, they describe “Jeong” in a way that means affection and caring. It is something different than love.
I used to watch a lot of variety shows while growing up because it helped me to learn a lot of Korean used for casual conversations as well as catch up on slang. Without variety shows, I do not think I would know a lot of the slang I know today. On Runningman, HaHa always came out as a childish character who always made jokes and was never serious. I always thought HaHa would be the same in real-life but by watching this video, I realized how different he actually is outside of the screen. He was very mature and grounded and the way he talked about certain topics was extremely poised and well mannered. Something I also learned is that Korea has an even more 2 faced tendency than the U.S. culture. Celebrities are set to the highest standards, so they cannot run into any scandals or problems or they will be permanently “canceled.” This is why I think it was even more interesting to see that HaHa was so completely different from his character on Runningman.
Comments
I found your comments on Koreans having more of a “2 Faced Tendency” super interesting! I wonder if this is something that producers capitalize on for material in the variety shows you mentioned. I also can’t imagine how much higher the pedestal is for Korean celebrities than for US based ones, since I feel they also have to maintain a near picture perfect persona.
It is very interesting that not just the celebrities have restaurants, but also their relatives. It is like Kim SeokJin's brother, Min Yoongi's mother, Chanyeol's mother also. They have a strong fan culture that goes beyond buying their albums and going to see their concert. Having a restaurant is a different way to interact with their fans.