#5: Eat Your Kimchi (EYK)
Racist Moments of KpopIf you’ve somehow been lucky enough to have no idea what EYK is, count yourself lucky. They are a white married couple who has been living in Seoul for the past 5 years and have a youtube channel that has tens of millions of views where they review kpop music and talk about aspects of Korean culture… you know, since they’re experts on Korea, even though they can’t speak a of Korean. They frame themselves as “not being experts” at the beginning of their videos, but then go on to give authoritative-sounding descriptions of issues from “Teenage Pregnancy,” to “Plastic Surgery” and standards of beauty in Korea. Why don’t they at least have a Korean person in their videos with them as part of the conversation when they talk about aspects of Korean culture? Isn’t that a reasonable thing to ask especially when you’re foreigners who don’t speak the language? Theirs is a subtle racism born from unchecked white & English-speaking privilege and internalized orientalist attitudes about their country of residence. Why are they even popular in the first place? Would a black couple in Korea doing the exact same work be even half as popular as they are or have nearly as many sponsors?
In 2013, despite repeated criticism, EYK continued to rate the English of Kpop singers in the videos they reviewed. All of this even as they can’t even pronounce the stars’ names properly in Korean and can barely speak any Korean after over 5 years there. Their excuses for not improving their Korean are pretty laughable and are a byproduct of their white and English-speaking privilege which doesn’t necessitate that they learn it in any meaningful way, allowing them to rest on their laurels. They also released a video this year knowingly putting on blackface and laughing about it and, in addition to a ton of other bull find themselves at #5 on this year’s list.
Comments