Why The Biggest News Program Moved To YouTube

And bulgogi creamy pasta 🍝

안녕! It’s Ari, your talkative Korean friend and weekend reminder 🎉 Today’s newsletter is about a creamy pasta recipe, my Korean news program recommendation, and a line from The Glory. Let’s start!

📢 The podcast will be back next week with a new style of Korean lesson. I tried doing TikTok, but I couldn't overcome my insecurity of filming myself 🙃, so I decided to do podcast lessons, ones that I feel comfortable doing. They will be longer than previous podcast lessons and there will be a quiz at the end. Please look forward to it and sorry for any confusion with format changes.

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Bulgogi Creamy Pasta: A Delicious Fusion Of Korean And Western Flavors

img credit: 핸디쿡

If you’re a creamy pasta lover like me, you must’ve tried many different creamy pastas like shrimp creamy pasta or chicken creamy pasta. Today, I recommend you to add bulgogi to your creamy pasta. Bulgogi, or 불고기, is marinated slices of meat. It tastes sweet and also salty, so it will add more flavors to your creamy pasta and also add protein to the high-carb dish. It’s a great mix of Korean and western food! If you burn bulgogi a little using a cooking torch or something, it’s even better! You can make bulgogi sauce for yourself or buy a pre-made bulgogi sauce to make things easier. Watch the cooking video and treat yourself to a good meal!

If you’re a vegetarian, you can replace meat with chopped mushroom and onion.

Why The Biggest News Program Moved To YouTube

Kim Eo-jun’s Gyumson Is Nothing News Factory (img credit: 민들레)

Kim Eo-jun's News Factory has been the most popular news show for the past six years, with the highest ratings for a news program in history. It was loved for the host, Kim Eo-jun’s humorous and insightful conversations with big-name guests. The show was broadcasted on TBS, a public channel fully funded by Seoul city. All channels in South Korea are partially or fully funded by the government. However, after a new conservative Seoul mayor and president were elected, the Seoul city council passed a bill that cut all funding for the channel starting in 2024, targeting the most popular show, which had reported on corruption scandals involving the mayor and president. Police began investigating the show’s host for spreading false information, and the most popular news program in history came to an end on December 30th, 2022.

But the host and staff of the show started a new program on YouTube on January 9th. They named the new show as “Kim Eo-jun’s Gyumson Is Nothing News Factory.” “Gyumson is nothing” means “hard to be modest (because we’re the number one news program).” The host promised he’ll keep reporting on news that people need to know. The first episode of the new show surpassed 1 million views in just 4.5 hours. The number of concurrent viewers of their daily livestream surpassed 214K on Thursday. Kim Eo-jun is the latest of critical journalists who fled to YouTube from persecution. Beginning the new program, he said,

“The real power of the media and the prosecution lies not in reporting and prosecuting, but in burying things that should have been reported or prosecuted. With that power, an elite group is created and a bad power is built on top of the cartel. Such power thinks it can silence the sound they don't want to hear. But it’s a mistake.”

If you’re looking for a Korean news program to watch, subscribe to Kim Eo-jun’s Gyumson Is Nothing News Factory. They livestream the show from 7:05 am to 9 am KST, from Monday to Friday.

How To Promise Revenge In Korean

screenshot credit: Netflix

The hottest Korean Netflix series, The Glory, is filled with witty and memorable lines. Many of them went viral and they became memes on Korean internet. I picked one for today’s lesson which I think is the most important line in the series. It’s 오늘부터 모든 날이 흉흉할 거야 which is translated as “From now on, every single day will be a nightmare.” Dong-eun, the heroine character, says this to her high-school bully, promising revenge. In this line, there’s an interesting word,

흉흉하다 /hewng-hewng-ha-da/

흉흉하다 is an adjective meaning "to be turbulent; tumultuous; chaotic." It's a Sino-Korean word that came from Chinese. 흉(洶) means “water that flows very strongly and fiercely.” So if you hear 흉흉하다, think of a sea where strong or monstrous waves are crashing against each other. It’s the opposite of a calm and peaceful sea. This advanced word is not often used in daily speaking and is mostly used in literature or news articles. I think the writer used this word to express how vengeful the bullied victim is. Her peaceful sea or life was ruined by the bullies and now it’s time for their seas to be filled with monstrous waves.

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One last thing for today is a viral romantic? tweet. A few days ago, it was reported that a dead NASA satellite from the 1980s might fall around the Korean Peninsula. It ended up falling over the Bering Sea. A reaction to the news went viral. It said, “American satellite, if you must fall, there is a place you must go.” And then, a twitter user quote-tweeted it saying, “No one says anything, but all 25K people who retweeted this think of one person. It’s so romantic.” It shows how much Koreans dislike their president 🫠

리봉숙 @leebonsuku

아무말도 안했지만 이 글을 알티한 2.5만명이 모두 한 사람을 떠올린다니 너무 낭만적인것같아

외않되 @why_doushite

미국인공위성아 굳이 떨어져야겟다면 네가 꼭 가야할 곳이 있다

I used ChatGPT to correct my writing for today’s newsletter for the first time! Hope there’s no or only a few grammar mistakes. I always felt guilty about writing poor English, but today I feel less guilty 😌 As I use it, I was able to write sentences with no grammar mistakes. When the AI said, “The sentence is grammatically correct and the message is clear,” I was so happy, though I’m not sure the AI is 100% correct or not.

Thanks for reading! If you liked my newsletter, like, share, or leave a tip 👇 to support my work. It’ll help me a lot to keep creating 😘 See you next week, 안녕!