Mukbang, and My Mistakes
Henry Kim ·
"Mukbang, and My Mistakes"
I've made countless mistakes in life. Some ended with minor scrapes, but there are also painful memories of missing out on huge opportunities that quick-witted people would have seized, all due to my preconceived notions. Only after stumbling through several seismic shifts in media did I finally decide to become someone sensitive to change.
Rewind to 2011, when YouTube was just beginning to stir in Korea. At the time, the head of YouTube Korea was going around proposing partnerships to content providers. Our company was at that table, and YG Entertainment, home to Psy, was also there. However, the reactions were starkly divided.
Back then, our company was a so-called 'successful' agency. We were thriving, receiving calls from major corporations and the government in a traditional media environment where over 90% of the market was already dominated. In our eyes, YouTube Korea, which only recorded a few hundred views, was not an attractive market. It seemed like nothing more than a mediocre video repository that even our clients wouldn't bother with.
I was arrogant then. Even when Psy shook the world by achieving 100 million views with 'Gangnam Style' through YouTube, I remained complacent, polishing corporate presentation slides. I couldn't have imagined that the world would change so drastically.
My most embarrassing memory is my attitude towards 'mukbang'. "Who just blankly watches someone else eat?" At the time, mukbang was the content I ridiculed the most. Bearing the paltry title of an expert, I failed to read the public's desires, instead judging and disparaging them by my own standards. Ironically, now I enjoy watching mukbang on my way home from work. The content I once scoffed at has now become a massive industry.
Sometimes I imagine: What if I hadn't scoffed at 'mukbang' back then, and instead read the 'connection' and 'raw desires' stirring beneath its surface? I might have shed my shallow pride and started a YouTube creator company, or developed a short-form media app.
The current media landscape is once again rapidly changing, moving beyond Instagram and TikTok into an era driven by AI. The reason I deliberately bring up and dwell on past mistakes is clear: for me, regret isn't merely an emotional drain, but the most reliable 'future simulation' that costs nothing.
No one knows if the coming era will be an AI agentic era or not. But I do know that those who abandon everything for fun are the ones who will ride that wave.