Their rise comes amid increased public attention
to North Korea, whose young leader, Kim
Jong Un, has made global headlines with a
provocative run of weapons tests and high-
stakes nuclear diplomacy with President
Donald Trump.
“There are people who yearn for real scenes
showing how people in North Korea live. There
is a niche market for that,” said Jeon Young-sun, a
research professor at Seoul’s Konkuk University.
“Simply speaking, some people are curious
about what beer North Koreans drink and what
cookies they eat.”
Jang uses his Samsung smartphone to film
himself at his small Seoul apartment, and
sometimes invites fellow North Korean refugees
as guests and has friends shoot him when
he ventures out. He often appears with his
trademark dark fedora, but sometimes with a
colorful wig, a false mustache or even a Kim
Jong Un mask.
Video clips uploaded on Jang’s 2-year-old
channel showed him saying that ordinary North
Koreans usually raise dogs, rabbits, pigs and
chickens, but to either eat or sell to markets.
He said that calling someone “a baby born by
a young female slave” is considered a profanity
in North Korea, and that people there say
“Do you want to have the order of your ribs
revolutionarily reorganized?” when trying to
intimidate others.
He also said he never heard about the existence
of transgender people in North Korea, though
he heard about gays in the country.
Jang, who has about 7,000 subscribers to his
channel, said he does manual labor and delivers