KoreanBilly was featured on BBC Breakfast discussing how he has made a career out of explaining various British accents.
The South Korean YouTuber is known for his tongue-in-cheek instructional and educational videos that dissect regional British accents.
Amassing over 100,000 followers on YouTube, Seong-Jae Kong (his original name) has had a number of viral videos including
In the videos, Kong explains phrases such as “gonna get a cheeky Nando’s with the mandem” and “gotta go see ar kid in the ozzy.”
Kong told BBC Breakfast that his fascination with regional accents began when he was an exchange student in the UK.
“I was an exchange student in northern England, specifically Preston,” Kong explained. “My classmates were Scousers so I couldn’t really help absorbing their Scouse accent. I got really interested in northern accents during my student life in Preston. I started to make videos.”
When he returned to Korea he wanted to discuss the various British regional accents with them but instead managed to attract a number of Scouse viewers.
“After coming back to Korea I thought it would be quite interesting to talk about northern access to Korean people as well,” he said. “I made a video but suddenly all the Scousers came to my video and started to share it.”
Looking forward, Kong hopes to try different accents. So far, Welsh is the most difficult for the South Korean but Scouse remains his favourite.
Kong has certainly found a niche and has proven himself to be incredibly popular with a British audience. As the BBC presenter says, “he’s made a ‘Korea’ out of it.”
