New Delhi: A Korean man, dressed in a plain purple shirt and Harry Potter glasses, was pleasantly surprised by the transformation of Patna’s Marine Drive area. “Bahut saaf ho gaya hai. Aur jo bridge bana hai, bahut bhayankar bana hai (It’s become very clean. And the bridge looks stunning),” the man expressed in flawless Bihari accent. He then went to a local fair while continuing to converse in Hindi with his friend. The video, posted as a clip on Instagram, catapulted Lee Yechan to the viral hall of fame on the internet last month.
A South Korean speaking in Bihari accent can create cognitive dissonance. But in this era of virality, Lee Yechan is a true blue cross-cultural star, much like the South Korean YouTuber Daeyeon Won, better known as Woonie, who speaks Pakistani Punjabi and is winning hearts across social media platforms. As Indians lap up all things Korean these days, Lee’s story feels like an RSVP from South Korea.
In May, Lee, more popularly known as Charlie, returned to India after three years to attend an event in Hyderabad. But upon landing at the airport, he received a notification that the event had been cancelled. With nothing better to do, he decided to go to Patna – his home for 20 years and where his parents still live. To pass the time, he went out with his school friend Prashant to create “a vlog-type content just for fun”. And that’s how the internet’s favourite ‘Korean-Bihari’ was born.
“We’re going here and there. No pre-planning. It was just – let’s meet and shoot whatever we can, just have fun and show it to the audience that will be enjoyable enough for them to watch,” said Lee while discussing the behind-the-scenes of the video.
The original vlog version of the video was uploaded on Lee’s YouTube channel, 40Kahani, and it is approximately 20 minutes long.
“My friend actually took a clip from that video and put it on his Instagram, which went viral. So, no pre-planning. But then people love the fact that a Korean boy speaks Bihari [Hindi] so well. And that, I think, is what people enjoyed so much,” the 28-year-old said in an online interview with ThePrint.
Also read: A Korean YouTuber is the rage in Pakistan, even as he mocks them in fluent Urdu
Growing up in Patna
Lee, who arrived in India as a one-year-old infant, appreciates the love and attention he is receiving virtually from Indians today. However, as an introverted kid growing up in Patna in the late 1990s and 2000s, Lee struggled to cope with the attention he received in his surroundings.
“I was the only foreigner at a place where it was difficult to come across another foreign,” Charlie mentioned in one of his vlogs.
Kids at school would be curious about his name, where he came from, or what he brought in his lunchbox.
“The one struggle that I went through when I was in India was getting too much attention… Especially in school, they would always gather around, make circles, and smell the food. They showed interest, but it was too much for me as a kid,” Lee recalled.
Nonetheless, it was these circumstances – attending a regular CBSE school in Patna and being exposed to the local language at an early age – that allowed Lee to naturally pick up Bihari accent, much like a first language. His interactions in Korean were limited to speaking with his parents at home.
In 2015, Lee left India to pursue college abroad. This was well before the Korean wave had gained momentum in India, and awareness about the Korean culture was still relatively low. Today, Patna is one of the few places in the country that boasts a King Sejong Institute, a language school operated by the South Korean government.
But Lee doesn’t think he would have been spared the spotlight even if he had grown up in the 2020s. “I think I would have gotten even more attention because of BTS, BLACKPINK, K-pop, and K-drama. Because of the wave that’s happening…,” he said from Iowa City, where he is currently balancing part-time work and his career as a content creator.
In fact, living in a different country and continent makes it difficult for him to physically “feel” the virtual attention he receives. The growth in followers, subscribers, and media interactions are the only tangible indicators that tell him it’s all “real”.
“I’m in America right now, so I don’t know, I can’t feel it physically happening. I can only see it online,” he noted.
A career in singing
Lee’s career as a content creator had been a long time in the making. Although he shot the first clip in August 2020, it wasn’t until February 2022 that he finally launched his YouTube channel, 40Kahani, a wordplay on the phrase ‘Charlie’s Kahani’. Opening the video’s prologue in the typical Bihari accent, he narrated the reason for starting the channel. “I want to be a good storyteller and love singing,” he said.
A year and a viral video later, Lee’s motivation for being on YouTube hasn’t changed much. He still loves singing and has become a storyteller, sharing stories about his life. It was his story of revisiting India after three years, for the first time since the pandemic, that propelled him to viral fame.
“The YouTube channel is for me to build a career in singing. But I have zero experience. It’s like a life challenge for me. So, I thought, why not share this process with the audience and share it in Hindi because that’s a unique characteristic of mine,” Lee elaborated.
He wants the channel to become a digital platform that documents his journey of becoming a professional singer from scratch. Amidst all the fame, his personal life goal now is to become as popular as singer Armaan Malik.
“That’s what I put out as my goal – to become or sing with Armaan Malik one day, and that’s the journey I am going to show on my channel,” he said with a smile.
(Edited by Prashant)