June 04, 2016 08:22
Carrie or Kang Hye-jin has become the latest YouTube star to make the transition to bona fide TV.
Her YouTube show "Carrie and Toys" proved highly popular among children with some 860,000 subscribers and 1 billion hits combined.
Carrie uploads a clip once a day or more, and now there are more than 1,000 of them. In each clip of a few minutes, she shows how to assemble them and have fun with them while playing toy characters herself.
Clips draw thousands of replies.
She visits Dongdaemun Market once a week to select toys in person and shoots clips without scripts after a meeting with staff for ideas.
But now Kang's fans can see her on TV as she started hosting a cooking show for children on KBS on May 23.
Most children's TV has lost its luster because kids can watch so many clips on their phones, so the producers hope that Carrie with her established following will be a welcome shot in the arm.
Kang is neither a mother nor does she have any paper qualifications for dealing with children, but she seems to have an instinctive understanding of what appeals to them.
"For adults, everything has to be logical, but that doesn't matter for children," she says. "Try to see things from their point of view and sympathize with them. That's what makes them happy."
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