Today, many people enjoy watching Mukbang. Watching YouTubers eat, people can boost their appetite and feel vicarious satisfaction. As such, more and more people value the pleasure they feel through eating. But to pursue the happiness of a more quality meal, modern people lack the breadth of time and mind. Lee Du-hyung runs his own YouTube channel under the name of <Heungsam>. On the <Heungsam> channel, you can see things that are not shown by other Mukbang YouTubers. He makes a video of cooking with his parents and dining with them against the backdrop of a peaceful countryside. The number of people fascinated by his channel is now easily over 1.25 million. But before he became a successful YouTuber, he honestly says that he went through many trials and errors. Let's listen to his story with CAH.

1. Hello, Lee Du-hyung! Please introduce yourself!

Hello, Chung-Ang university students! I am Heungsam, a Mukbang YouTuber. My real name is Lee Du-hyung and I majored in economics.

2. Please introduce what your YouTube channel <Heungsam> means and what channel it is.

Actually, the name <Heungsam> doesn't really mean anything much. In the early days, I did Mukbang in my rooftop house, and I was looking for a nickname that went well with a hungry feeling, and I suddenly thought of it and started using it. After the channel got bigger, the viewers interpreted the nickname as "excitement”, so I'm happily using it now. My channel is a Mukbang channel. At first, I did the channel in my Noryangjin rooftop house with the Han River as the background, but went back to my hometown of Pohang last year. And now I'm doing the channel with my parents with the background of Pohang countryside.

3. We heard that you graduated with a degree in economics. Regardless of your major, we wonder how you became a YouTuber.

When I came back from the army, my friends were studying to become accountants, so I started following them. I studied for 3 years, but I kept failing. In 2016, I finally returned to school and prepared for other jobs, but I decided to try again because I had lingering feelings about being an accountant. One day, I was studying alone on the weekend, fell asleep, and found my mouth watering in the book. It was a book that I’d been writing for three years, and reality hit me when I saw it wet like that. I was 30 years old at the time, and I thought I couldn't do this anymore, so I packed up and left school. In January 2016, I broke up with my girlfriend, who I had studied with, and I was so shocked that I couldn't even turn off the lights in my room. Being alone in the room made me feel crazy, so I turned on some videos that I used to watch often. The videos I saw at that time were a great comfort to me, and that's why I started broadcasting.

4. We wonder what the reaction was when you expressed your dream to become a YouTuber.

Ten out of ten said badly. Not only my parents but also my friends all reacted negatively. I persuaded my parents saying, "I went to Chung-Ang university to learn things that would help me live in this society, and what I learned was to invest in blue-ocean”. As I said, I thought that since 10 out of 10 people disagree with my dream, being a YouTuber is still a blue ocean. At that time, Internet broadcasting was something that people were reluctant to do and thought badly about. Celebrities used to be treated poorly, but I thought YouTubers would be the same, and they are envied now. My friends who were belittling my dream at the time even ask me how to start YouTube.

5. There are a lot of Mukbang YouTubers these days, and your channel has a lot of subscribers. It's now at over 1.25 million. What do you think is the secret to the popularity of the <Heungsam> channel?

When I started the channel in 2016, many people were already running Mukbang channels. I was a latecomer. I tried to judge myself objectively. To catch up with the people who are starting first, there must be something different from others, but I realized that I was not handsome, but that I ate well, and spoke better than others. So, I started to watch other people's broadcasts carefully. And when I saw all the YouTubers doing Mukbang indoors at the time, I decided to differentiate myself by doing it outdoors. Therefore, I took a video for the first time in my rooftop room. But my number of subscribers hasn't gone up to 50,000. At that time, I had a slump. Because of the stress, I couldn't sleep and lost hair. To overcome this problem, I went to a bookstore to buy books related to YouTube and started studying. And then I saw a video from China making food in the countryside. In Korea, there were no video of that concept at the time, and I decided to benchmark the channel and shoot an eating show and went back to my hometown. Because my parents lived in the country. My mother helped me a lot in cooking and my parents and I appeared and ate together. I was loved by many people for being realistic and warm. I think the viewers like that kind of family atmosphere.

6. It is said that the trend is to have various editing skills, equipment, or agencies for the effective management of YouTube channels. How do you manage your channel?

When my friends come and ask me what they should do with YouTube and what they should use with the equipment, I tell them not to buy expensive equipment, but to take videos with their cell phones. If I say so, everyone says they want to buy the right equipment and get started. Then I ask them the reason they think why people are watching YouTube when there is an existing media, TV. My answer to this question is that YouTube is different from TV. TV is a well-made, high-quality video, and YouTube is just a video that any average person can upload . TV has its plot, but YouTube videos sometimes just come to a conclusion from the beginning. That's the charm of YouTube. In that sense, I just use a regular mirror camera. There were a lot of suggestions from the agencies, but I didn't go in. My friend has been an editor since the beginning. In other words, there's nothing special or extraordinary about managing my channels. Just like SNS such as mini homepage, Facebook, and Instagram, it's good enough for an individual to just work hard.

8. You've been running Mukbang channel for quite a long time. What's the driving force behind you?

I started this job because I liked it. There are a lot of people who start to make money on YouTube these days, but at that time, YouTubers were not envious jobs. But I started it because I really liked it. Most single-media people are called 'attention seeker.’ Rather than being a YouTuber who makes more money than anyone else, I wanted to be a YouTuber who receives love and attention from more people. So, in the early days, there were times when I had financial difficulties, but I was thrilled to see more and more people watching my eating show, so I was able to stay motivated and continued to do it.

9. You've filmed a video with a number of influencers, and we'd like to know which one of them is the most memorable.

I remember Mukbang YouTuber Beomfrica the most. He is my best friend and he is close to me outside of YouTube. The advantage and disadvantage of this job is that my performance is made public to others. YouTubers have no choice but to know each other's subscribers. Some people treat people by dividing their ranks by the number of subscribers each has. As a result, we are competitors indefinitely. When I first met Beomfrica, it was less than half a year since I had started my channel. I was a newcomer, and he was a so-called ‘Major’. But he was almost the only one who treated me as a friend. He was such a famous person that even though I had a little difficulty with him, he kept helping me and contacting me. This job is loved by many people, but paradoxically, it is also a lonely job. Because YouTube is a personal broadcast, I have to run the channel alone. Of course, I got a lot of help running the channel from him, but I also felt very comforted at the time because he treated me as a friend. Now, Beomfrica is active not only as a personal broadcasting but also as a chef for a franchise called Beomfrica Life Chicken. I hope he will be more successful in the future.

10. What is your favorite video among the many videos you uploaded?

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSCFCWmxBf4

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-jv-ofzvoo

These two videos are my favorite. It's because these two videos are the first two where my parents appeared. My parents opposed me becoming a YouTuber, but they saw me working hard and said they would take pictures with me. These are videos that I'm more attached to than other videos with more views.

11. What was the most difficult thing about running the <Heungsam> channel?

YouTubers are often criticized as much as they are loved by the public. I think I have to bear it, but I'm with my parents. I'm afraid to see such bad comments. There are some people who write malicious words about my parents, so that's the most difficult part for me. I can bear to be insulted, but I'm worried that they will get hurt. They are look at their cell phones because they always read the comments until they go to sleep when the video is uploaded at 6 p.m. So I'm trying to delete them as soon as possible before they see it, but it's not easy because there are so many.

12. Are there any classes or professors you most remember?

When I went to college, I studied and did YouTube at the same time. At that time, I took classes of Professor Ahn Tae-gun's <International Commerce> and <International Transportation>, and they were the most memorable. He was a young professor and he gave me a lot of encouragement and consideration when he found out that I was a one-person media player. I felt like I was being recognized and encouraged by the support of an authority like a professor.

13. If you could go back to Chung-Ang University, what would you like to do most?

If I go back to my college days, instead of studying for Certified Public Accountant (CPA), I would have gone to the army quickly and started the one-man media sooner. Then I think I would be a more famous YouTuber now. Also, I minored in business administration while I was studying economics, and rather than that, I wish I had learned media related studies such as photography, newspaper and broadcasting, or advertising and film. Then, I think I would be able to take better pictures when I'm filming now.

14. If you have a dream as a YouTuber, please let us know! What kind of YouTuber do you want to be?

More than the most lucrative YouTuber, I want to be a YouTuber who gives the most happiness. To do that, I am trying to be a YouTuber who does the most delicious Mukbang.

15. Please say a few words to young college students who want to go the same way, and to those who are reading this article from Chung-Ang University.

Many people come to me for advice when they want to try YouTube. I can't tell people who are willing to work hard not to do it, so I tell them to work hard, but I hope they don't. The reason is that when I started, there were not many people doing it compared to now and it was relatively blue-ocean. Therefore, even a person who is not talented like me could succeed if he or she worked hard. But now, it has become a job that you and I want to do, and it has become an era where it is hard to succeed with only passion. There is no content that people don't already do, and YouTubers with old know-how, experience, and economic power and large fan bases are preoccupying it. It's very hard to get through that wall. But like I did four years ago, if you really want to try it, try it. When I was a high school student, people who were good at studying came out on TV and said, "I didn't go to academy but studied mainly in textbooks," "I reviewed hard," and I was annoyed. But when I looked back on YouTube, I realized that was the answer. There's no special secret or technique for doing YouTube. I think people will succeed someday if they try to upload videos diligently and make good videos at the time promised with their subscribers. They only give up because they can't wait until that day. If you expect too much from the beginning, you will be disappointed. I hope you enjoy your work and enjoy it as you will continue to do it diligently and steadily.

Lee Du-hyung is giving people the pleasure of eating. Eating food comfortably and deliciously is a small happiness, but it’s not easy to achieve as a modern person. So people feel happy while subscribing to and watching his channel. He is now called a successful Mukbang YouTuber, but he says the reason he was able to succeed was because he loved to shoot Mukbang a lot, and because such a thought was conveyed to subscribers, he was able to succeed. He worries about people who want to be a YouTuber, but on the other hand, he says if they feel like they really want to do it and have the courage to do it, they should start it vigorously. CAH sends words of encouragement to him and hope he will continue to deliver happiness.