When it comes to language learning, an important part is immersion. It is recommended to immerse yourself in a language on a daily basis in order to improve quicker. Apart from living in the country in question, there are other great ways to immerse yourself in the target language. Be it through language exchange, songs, podcasts or videos, there is an option for everybody. I’m focusing on the latter option as a combination of reading and listening is the best way to retain information as well as connecting words with the action in the video. In my opionion, the best way of learning is when you start to enjoy the content you are consuming.
According to statista around 500 hours of content were uploaded to Youtube every minute (June 2022). Youtube is the biggest platform when it comes to long form content. You’ll find any kind of content from the broad masses to small niche content made by Youtubers from all over the world. Therefore I compiled a list of different video categories together with some Youtube channels that I found amusing. Note that I only covered topics that I’m personally interested in. If you were looking for K-pop or dramas you won’t find them here, but I’ll encourage you to search for them on Youtube or other movie sites dedicated to korean dramas.
Documentaries#
The first big topic are documentary channels ranging from wildlife over history and science to all sorts of topics. As documentaries are also very popular on TV it is no surprise that we can see some big broadcasters uploading their videos to Youtube. Some big names are EBS (Korea Educational Broadcasting System), KBS (Korean Broadcasting System) as well as YTN (연합 [yeonhab] Television News). What they all have in common is that they offer multiple Youtube channels for different topics. While EBSDocumentary (EBS 다큐) and KBS 다큐 seem to upload any kinds of documentaries there are specialized channels for animal and nature documentaries (환경스페셜), history documentaries (KBS역사저널 그날 and 로빈의 역사 기록 / Robin’s Historical Records) as well as science documentaries (EBS 컬렉션 - 사이언스 and YTN 사이언스). While there might still be many more smaller documentary channels, this might suffice as a starting point.
Movie reviews / essays#
Apart from consuming movies I also enjoy hearing about other people’s opinion on movies that I liked or disliked. In particular for movies that I enjoyed a lot it’s fun to watch some video essays that explore the lore or highlight details that you might have missed on your first watch. In any case it will help your understanding of the videos when you have watched the movies beforehand. An advantage of these types of videos are that they tend to be shorter and usually offer subtitles.
While there are some channels which make reviews and/or essays on all kinds of genre like 무비희락 and 당신이 모르는 감독의 마음 for international movies, 리씨네 for korean movies and 카랑Karang as well as movie trip 무비트립 for both, there are other channels that tend to focus on specific movie genre. Popcorn & Coke Review focuses mostly on action, sci-fi and horror movies. B Man 삐맨 does video essays on marvel and super hero movies while 동네비디오방 makes videos on action movies.
Variety channels#
Some Youtube channels that I’ve found during my research where hard to group into a single category, therefore I simply grouped all of these under the variety channel umbrella. These channels are usually better produced and have custom subtitles. Due to the variety of topics these might be more appealing to a wider audience.
The first channel I want to mention is a channel that I got recommended by a friend. The channel is called 데이브 World of Dave and is hosted by an american of the same name. From what I can judge his korean seems pretty good and he is fun to watch. His videos usually involve other people and cover korean culture, food, travel vlogging and more.
The next channel is a bit odd while still being pretty entertaining. The name of the channel is 침착맨. While the channel seems to cover a wide variety of topics, food seems to be a common theme in his videos. Many videos involve the host talking to some guests on stream while consuming some food or drinks.
Video gaming#
In this day and age video gaming reached mainstream and through it’s interactive nature can immerse people in a way that movies and books simply can’t. With the rise of Twitch and Youtube streaming more and more Youtubers uploaded their streams as VODs (Videos on Demand). This resulted in longer videos and therefore they usually have no custom subtitles. Apart from Let’s Plays and Video game streaming there is another aspect of video gaming that I wanted to cover here as well. Video game essays as well as game design videos direcly cover aspects of a single or multiple games and compile these aspects in generally shorter videos. The advantage of these videos are that these tend to have subtitles as they are heavily edited anyways.
Similiar to the movie review channels we have Let’s Players with different tastes in games. We have those that play the major popular games while there are also others that focus on specific types of games. While there are many gaming Youtubers I want to highlight a few that I personally enjoyed watching the most. First of all I want to mention the Youtuber 연두부 풀영상 which sticks out due to her outgoing and amusingly crazy personality. She plays all major games and uploads some Just Chatting videos in between. On the other side we have more calm and composed Youtubers like 올냥이 AllTopCAT and 녹두로 월드. I feel both of them are quite entertaining in their own way. While AllTopCAT leans more towards sports related games, Nokduro World plays more adventure type games. The next category of Youtubers I want to mention here are more traditional Youtubers in a way that they cut their videos which in turn tend to be shorter. They both also like to player smaller less-main stream games. In particular 혜안 and SUNBA선바 are worth mentioning here. While both are pretty entertaining to watch I enjoy Sunba’s meme-ish personality.
Although there are a plethora of video game essay channels there are three that I’ve been watching frequently. First to mention would be GCL 지씨엘 with it’s nice editing. The focus of the essays seems to be on action, adventure and horror games. The second channel named 뻔튜브 has a similar focus on games. I really enjoy the hosts clear and calm pronunciation. Third in the list is GameDO. Instead of video game essay, his focus is on gaming news, unpacking, and first impressions of video games.
Did you know any or all of these Youtubers? Are there any important channels that I’ve missed or that I should check out? Please let me know!