Study buddies: South Korean YouTubers take cram sessions to new level
- With gongbang or ‘study broadcast’ videos, Korean students offer virtual partners in hitting the books
- The bizarre internet trend has caught on in the rest of the world, with one British gongbang YouTuber boasting 530,000 subscribers
The video is part of a bizarre internet trend in South Korea called gongbang, or “study broadcast” – people broadcasting themselves studying in almost total silence for hours on end.
Many South Korean students study up to 16 hours a day to prepare for their gruelling college or university entrance examinations, and the video trend is believed to have started after a Korean student filmed himself poring over his schoolbooks so that his parents could see he was diligently preparing.
Now gongbang videos are proliferating, and have spread to other countries including the US, Japan, Britain and India. With titles like “Your study buddy has arrived” to “Med School Finals – Hard Work Will Pay Off”, the videos make other students who watch them feel like they are studying with someone – in other words, they are virtual study partners.
One of the most popular gongbang YouTube channels in South Korea is entitled “The man sitting next to me”, and features an anonymous male student whose aim is to become a tax accountant. He bills his channel as the “world’s first 24-hour live study broadcast”.
He live-streams himself studying at a desk, lined with books and with snowfall visible outside his window, and has 53,000 subscribers.