Young Koreans hooked on streamed reality

A meal and a webcam are the unlikely recipe for fame in South Korea as an app for live video streaming draws young people.

Every evening, 14-year-old Kim Sung-jin orders fried chicken, delivery pizza or Chinese food to eat in a small room in his family's home south of Seoul. He gorges on food as he chats before a live camera with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of teenagers watching.

That's the show, and it makes Kim money: 2 million won ($A2300) in his most successful episode.

Better known to his viewers by the nickname Patoo, he is one of the youngest broadcasters on Afreeca TV, an app for live-broadcasting video online, launched in 2006.

Kim, who has a delicate physique and chopstick-like slight limbs, has been broadcasting himself eating almost every evening since he was 11. Sometimes he invites friends to eat with him. To add fun, he once wore a blonde wig and dressed as a woman.

While the internet has been making stars for years - from bloggers to gamers who play for millions of YouTube viewers - outsiders may find it puzzling, if not outright bizarre, for young people to spend hours watching someone eating.

But in South Korea, Afreeca TV has become a big player in the internet subculture and a crucial part of social life for teens.

Shows like Kim's are known as "Meok Bang", a mash-up Korean word of broadcast and eating. They are the most popular and often most profitable among about 5000 live shows that are aired live at any given moment on Afreeca TV.

Kim started the show essentially to find someone to eat with. His parents worked in another city so he was living with his grandparents, and they ate dinner so early he got hungry at night.

"I do what I want. That's the perk of a personal broadcast."

Many connect the popularity of Meok Bang to the increasing number of South Koreans who live alone, and to the strong social aspects of food in this society.

"Even if it is online, when someone talks while eating, the same words feel much more intimate," said Ahn Joon-soo, an executive at Afreeca TV.

He noted South Koreans' common habit of bidding farewell to friends by saying, "Let's eat together next time," even when they don't literally mean it.

There are plenty of other quirky offerings on Afreeca TV. Late at night there is "Sool Bang" - broadcast drinking - in which melancholic South Koreans drink liquor alone discussing their tough lives.

Then there is "Study Bang", or broadcast studying: a screen shows the hand of an unidentified person writing notes on a thick book under the light of a desk lamp.

About 60 per cent of the eight million unique monthly visitors to Afreeca TV are teens or in their 20s. That means nearly 40 per cent of the 12.5 million South Koreans aged 10 to 30 watch a show on Afreeca TV at least once a month.

Kim is not a particularly polite virtual dinner guest. He burps loudly before his audiences and sometimes walks off abruptly, announcing with some specificity that he needs to use the bathroom. He usually leaves his fans with a mission, during his absence, promising a prize to the person who last clicks the "like" button when he is back.

Hardcore Afreeca TV viewers are drawn to hosts like Kim because they can interact with them, unlike more distant TV stars.

"I was so moved," said Lee Yeon-joo, a 15-year-old recalling the moment when a 26-year-old man read her message in the middle of his live show. "You cannot really approach celebrities."

Most broadcasters, including Kim, are reluctant to reveal how much money they make. Afreeca TV said out of about 300,000 broadcasters who air their show at least once a month, the top 500 make more than what one would normally make by working full time, but the company declined to be more specific.

Afreeca TV's model may not translate across borders, however. The company's efforts to make inroads in Japan, Taiwan and the US have met with little response.


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Source: AAP


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