Kimbap, sliced and rolled in one swift motion, is the epitome of convenience food. Yet the meaning contained in that split second can be an eternity for someone. We set out to trace that time.
Singer and broadcaster, the beloved national guide Kim Jeong-yeon, after changing her name to Hong Danbi, is moistening parched sensibilities like welcome rain after a drought, taking up the Hong Danbi TV camera and ranging far and wide in search of stories of everyday life. Popping up like a hidden camera without a storyboard or script, Hong Danbi makes an impression from the very outfit. The moment people see Hong Danbi in red overalls with the top⬝bottom joined as one, instead of the guide uniform she wore consistently for 17 years, exclamations follow. It is because a celebrity seen on TV suddenly comes up and, like a long-time neighbor, casually asks about the stories of yesterday and today. What is asked naturally shapes the answers. Hong Danbi asks about the rich, aching truths that no one has been able to confide. This is why Hong Danbi TV, not even a month since opening, is quietly moving viewers and becoming a talking point. After going to the Bukhansan hiking trail, the Dongmyo flea market, Majang Lake, Gumi Munsu Temple, and Sewoon Sangga to draw up stories of how people live, the recently uploaded ‘Life Stories of Sewoon Sangga’ on Hong Danbi TV is spreading by word of mouth and its views are surging.
In the single-path life confessed by the veteran owner of an electronics shop, a fixture of Sewoon Sangga with 43 years of experience, stands out a tearful humanism that endured, trusting only in one skill amid severe poverty and hunger. “In the past, when even getting into middle school was hard, I came up to the capital on impulse, and because I had no money I spent a night at Changgyeongwon waiting to get kimbap from students on a picnic,” he recalls of his hungry childhood. In the electronics alley behind Seongdong High School, he began learning the trade saying, “Just feed me,” became a respectable technician at 19, and built a family and raised children; from his candid confession, “Some say the money comes easily, but only after a full 40 years did I barely secure a shop, and only now have I been able to ease the worry of rent,” wafts a deep pride and a genuine human warmth that shows Sewoon Sangga is not merely a workplace but “my entire life” and life itself.
The agency stated, “If Kim Jeong-yeon is a brand, Hong Danbi is content. As six episodes have aired, we have discovered the boundless power of an unscripted real human drama. The protagonists of ‘Would You Like a Cup of Tea with Danbi’ are everyone who meets Hong Danbi,” adding, “Call Hong Danbi and we are ready to run anywhere. Contact us for family events both happy and sad, and we will create a one-of-a-kind life theater that exists nowhere else in the world.”
Meanwhile, Kim Jeong-yeon is set to release a new single this summer under the stage name Hong Danbi. The new song, too, is in step with Hong Danbi TV, ‘Scent of People’. In an era when the patterns of humanity and the sensibility of the humanities are being diluted, expectations are mounting over how much Kim Jeong-yeon, or rather Hong Danbi, will gently moisten the hearts of ordinary people with the new song, because the trust Kim Jeong-yeon has built over some 30 years of broadcasting is that substantial.
