Why did you start making meokbang videos?

I love eating and Korean cuisine is especially great. I thought it¡¯d be wonderful to introduce all these delicious Korean foods to people back home. So I started posting about Korean food and my life in Korea on Ameba (a Japanese blogging website), which garnered a lot of attention. I thought of better ways to share the food experience, and I found YouTube to be the perfect platform because directly showing me eating food makes for better videos.

What are difficulties you face in making your videos?

Things are sometimes tricky because of the cultural differences between Korean and Japanese table manners. I wanted to adopt Korean ways to make my meokbang videos because after all, I vlog about Korean food. This means I had to be a voracious eater with my mouth wide open and make eating noises to show how tasty the food is. Yet I was aware that this would make people uncomfortable and dislike the videos. Since sound effects make videos more appealing and appetizing, I often face a dilemma in finding the right balance.

How do you plan and produce your content? How do you choose the food?

As every meokbang creator covers trendy food at least once, I choose the most popular food at the time of planning. And when a new item comes out at a famous restaurant or chain, I try to be the first to bring it to Japan. Other than these two instances, I pick as my topic whichever food I¡¯m interested in at the moment. Food for spring or a rainy day is a good example. After I select the food, I record and edit the video myself. I usually put out content every other day.

Do you run any channels other than your meokbang one?

Besides my main meokbang channel, I have another on my life in Korea. I sometimes talk about my fun stories in Korea, introduce simple snacks available at convenience stores or talk about famous restaurants in touristy places. I also used to cover Korean beauty products, but I don¡¯t do that much anymore. Because I¡¯ve included content to introduce Japanese-related stories or food, the channel is increasingly seeing more Korean viewers. And I¡¯d love to open another channel to soon introduce Japanese food to Koreans after I can communicate better in Korean. As a foodie, I have a big list of fantastic restaurants in Japan and can¡¯t wait to share this information with Koreans.

Which Korean food has drawn the most attention from Japanese viewers?

The most popular are fried chicken, tteokbokki (spicy stir-fried rice cake) and Korean-style corndogs. When I first brought up the Korean-style corndog, it wasn¡¯t common in Japan and I never expected it to be that good, either. Japan has recently seen many corndog vendors originating from Korea Town. When I visited Tokyo not long ago, I was surprised to see many corndog stores and vendors on the food streets in the Namba and Shimbashi areas.

Your popularity in Japan is quite high. How was your recent fan meeting?

My channel recently reached 700,000 subscribers, and I held a fan meeting to show how much I appreciate viewers. The first such meeting was successful and I had a great time interacting with fans. Korean meokbang creator Nado also came, and we all ate my favorite Korean foods, corndogs and fried chicken, while talking to each other in person, which was fantastic. I want to hold another fan meeting to see more supporters from other regions. The cartoon illustration on my channel¡¯s profile was also a gift from one of my subscribers.

What do you want to achieve through your videos? What are your plans?

My ultimate goal is to share delicious Korean food with my viewers. Since Japanese tourists usually stay for three to four days in Korea, the variety of food they can try is limited. It¡¯s inadvisable to eat random food on such a short trip, so I want them to have the best food experience possible. In that sense, I try to make my videos more informative. I sometimes hear from my viewers that my videos satisfy their desire to eat while dieting or that watching me eat well helped them to eat better when they had no appetite. Just like this, I hope people find pleasure through food by watching my videos. My plans also align with my hope to help more people in my own way instead of just trying to get more subscribers.