MINAMI, the “gyaru ghost,” unabashedly dancing Para Para on the quiet shores of Geoje. WONI, declaring that she’ll show everyone how to have fun in the water, then rolling up her sweatpants and striding straight into the sea without hesitation. “Gyaru and Geoje (Geoje Pt. 1),” a video capturing the two girls’ curious companionship, surpassed 13.39 million views in roughly three months. Along the way, “Geoje, Yaho” took on a life of its own as a meme, turning up everywhere. RESCENE’s “LOVE ATTACK,” released two years earlier, enjoyed a belated resurgence, climbing into the upper reaches of the charts on major streaming platforms and even reaching No. 1 on a music show aired by a major broadcast network. All of this unfolded within just six months of the launch of “helloiamwoninicetomeetyou.” At a time when everyone seems to be watching and enjoying something different, “helloiamwoninicetomeetyou” gives people a place to come together around the same scenes — to watch, laugh, and talk. From “Solfa,” which posed questions about the world through its singular perspective, to “ODG,” which brought the childhood in all of us back to the surface, and now, in 2026, “helloiamwoninicetomeetyou.” We spoke with director Yoon Sung-won, head of Solfa Studio — a company that has helped shape the evolution of YouTube content — about the creative force behind it all.
“helloiamwoninicetomeetyou” began as a channel to promote RESCENE, but the team is now one of the most talked-about girl groups.
Yoon Sung-won: I was in the U.S. recently, and it wasn’t until I returned to Korea that I heard people actually using “yaho” in conversation. That was when it finally hit me: “yaho” really had caught on. I’m proud and honored to be part of this moment. What’s especially surprising is that people know who each member of RESCENE is and even understand their individual on-screen persona. It’s incredibly rare to feel as though the whole country is behind you.
How did you manage to capture the attention of such a broad audience? That’s no small feat in today’s fragmented media landscape, where people increasingly gravitate toward content tailored to their individual tastes.
Yoon Sung-won: I expected it to do reasonably well, but honestly, at this point, it’s entered a realm of madness that’s completely beyond my control (laughs). Even now, I approach every “helloiamwoninicetomeetyou” video with viewers who don’t know any of the members’ names in mind. I either lead with something about the cast — where they’re from, their professional experience, and so on — or create a situation that is entertaining in its own right. Starting from the assumption that viewers know nothing about the people on screen is what allows us to make videos that work without any prior context. In the dialect episode, for example, the hook wasn’t “ZENA and WONI”; it was “idols who speak in regional dialects.” That was the video that put “helloiamwoninicetomeetyou” on the map. I could feel it happening while we were making it, and the data later confirmed it. Along the way, viewers also latched onto “Geoje, Yaho.” Ultimately, I think what people responded to was a side of idols they hadn’t seen before. ZENA is naturally quiet, and she seemed a little deflated, so I wanted to give her a shout-out (laughs).
When you say people were seeing a side of idols they hadn’t seen before, what exactly do you mean?
Yoon Sung-won: More accurately, it was a side of them that viewers felt they hadn’t seen before. We wanted to reveal sides of them that differed slightly from the way they were usually presented in the media. We did that by capturing everything candidly — from things you notice right away, like an idol speaking in a regional dialect or walking into the water in sweatpants, to moments that would normally be edited out. I think viewers pick up on all those subtle differences. Of course, given the nature of their work as idols, we’re also mindful of what our cast needs.
What did you see in WONI? I was curious because you’ve said that it was her courage that made you want to launch “helloiamwoninicetomeetyou.”
Yoon Sung-won: When I said “courage,” I was talking about the little things she did — the way she opens her mouth wide when she laughs, for example. Expressions and gestures like that tell you what someone holds back and what they’re willing to let show. I saw WONI as someone who had the courage to show more of herself without letting circumstances dictate how she behaved.
What are the other members like? I get the sense that their personalities come through very naturally throughout the content.
Yoon Sung-won: WONI is at her best when there’s no setup, whereas MINAMI really shines when you give her one. She’s a fantastic performer. She can pull you in in an instant. There was a day when MINAMI had a bad cold and was running a high fever. She was clearly struggling, but the second she stepped in front of the camera, she was so good that I couldn’t help but admire her. LIV strikes me as someone who would thrive on a major variety show, while MAY and ZENA are exactly what you’d expect from a pair of nineteen-year-old girls (laughs). They all seem to be exactly as they come across in the content.
I was also struck by how quickly you moved beyond the concept to show more of MINAMI herself, even at the height of the buzz around her “gyaru” persona.
Yoon Sung-won: I knew she was getting a steady stream of appearance requests built around her gyaru persona. That was only natural. At the same time, if another show happened to run with a similar idea — even entirely by coincidence — it could put us in a difficult position. I also felt we'd already shown everything there was to show with the gyaru concept. After interviewing MINAMI, I realized there was so much more to her, so I thought it made sense to start showing more of who she was sooner rather than later.
By then, the “gyaru” and “Silla princess” characters had already taken off, so pairing LIV and MAY as a “Pat & Mat”-style duo wasn’t exactly the safest move either.
Yoon Sung-won: In this case, we didn’t even need to look for a defining trait to build the idea around. We simply worked with a situation the audience had already created: “All the other members are famous now — want to see what the overlooked ones are up to?” I already knew from clips of their livestreams that LIV and MAY were starting to get anxious. Then, when I met them, they actually said, “It’s just the two of us hanging out these days.” The moment I heard that, I thought, “Yes — that’s it,” and we filmed it.
Do you have any plans to make another video like “How to Survive a Bear Encounter”? It seems like more and more viewers are hoping for one.
Yoon Sung-won: Those are people who know a thing or two (laughs). My team and I thought the video had a bit of an edge to it. I still think it could have done well if we’d approached it from a slightly different angle. I’d actually like to make more videos like that. We’re just waiting for the right moment.
Your videos have also drawn a lot of praise for their cinematic quality. That’s especially evident in your use of film soundtracks as background music and in the way the gyaru episode evokes “Kamikaze Girls.”
Yoon Sung-won: That’s probably because I have a specific concept in mind for every video. I don’t simply think, “We’ll shoot in this location.” I plan by picturing someone dressed in a particular color against a certain kind of backdrop and imagining how it will look on screen. In the film, Momoko lives in the countryside but has this flamboyant sense of style. I found that contrast visually interesting, so I thought it would be worth incorporating into the gyaru concept. We’ve seen characters with that kind of sensibility in films over the years, but you rarely see them in YouTube content. That made me think the concept could really stand out.
The way you style the cast also seems to play a major role in making each video’s concept clear and memorable — MINAMI’s gyaru look and WONI’s tracksuit in the Geoje episode, for example.
Yoon Sung-won: My level of involvement with wardrobe varies from video to video. Usually, our art director gathers reference images, and I choose the one that feels right and pass it on to the agency. For the gyaru episode specifically, our art director handled MINAMI’s look. With WONI’s outfit for the Geoje episode, I wanted it to immediately look like she’d just stepped outside her front door in her own neighborhood. I initially even asked her to wear a pair of basic rubber slides. One early option was a tracksuit with a cool L.A. girl vibe, but I said, “No, that’s not it. Think teenage runaway,” and we worked from there to get the tone right. With “Pat & Mat,” all we had at first was the basic idea of a “Dumb and Dumber”-style duo. I suggested putting them in rugby shirts because that kind of duo wouldn’t work if they looked too polished.
YouTube’s visual language tends to emphasize everyday life and minimal staging. What led you to take a more concept-driven approach?
Yoon Sung-won: For one thing, it makes planning easier. Once you have a concept, the cast has a clear direction to follow. Of course, the basic process is much the same whether or not there’s a concept. You decide how the video begins and ends, then lay out the key beats it needs to hit along the way. Within that framework, the cast actually has more freedom. A specific concept gives them a clearer sense of direction and more room to play.
The “johnorpark” video chronicling John Park’s foray into Berlin’s club scene was built around a fresh concept that fit his persona perfectly, helping the video gain traction across social media and online forums.
Yoon Sung-won: There was already plenty of content about Berlin’s club scene elsewhere, but it was still relatively rare in Korea, even as interest was growing. If you only present information that’s familiar to people who already know the scene, you’re narrowing your potential audience. So during production, I went so far as to tell my team, “Not even one percent of people in Korea know anything about Berlin clubs.” My point was that rather than relying on an audience already familiar with the subject, we needed to make the video with a much wider audience in mind.
Getting people to respond that way is one thing; converting them into subscribers seems like another challenge altogether.
Yoon Sung-won: Then you have to turn the question around and ask, “Why would I subscribe to this?” People need to know what they can expect from the channel. The draw might be the person at its center, the sensibility of the videos, or simply how subscribing makes them feel. That’s why the initial strategy for the johnorpark Instagram account was to give people the sense that following it would teach them something, help them improve their English, and ultimately feel like time well spent.
I fell for that exact strategy myself and followed the account (laughs).
Yoon Sung-won: Honestly, I don’t think about strategy in especially complicated terms. I always say, “Good content wins. That’s it.” People ask me all the time how to crack the algorithm, but to me, it’s just a natural phenomenon. Make sure you put that in. I think it’s absurd to claim there’s some secret to the algorithm (laughs). It’s no different from real life. At school, there’s always that popular kid everyone talks about. What’s the secret there?
I completely agree that “good content wins,” but at the same time, I wonder if it’s really possible to come up with a fresh, compelling idea every single time.
Yoon Sung-won: I approach every video as if the channel has zero subscribers (laughs). I spent years running “ODG” and “Solfa,” where the cast and premise changed from one video to the next, so “helloiamwoninicetomeetyou” is relatively easy for me. The channel has continuity, which keeps a core audience coming back. But relying on that alone won’t bring in new viewers. So for the first video of Season 2, we didn’t introduce the cast as “ZENA and WONI”; we framed them more broadly as “idols from Gyeongju.” That way, even viewers who didn’t know either of them could still find the video interesting. I’ve never thought of it as a rule, exactly, but the logic behind how I make things is always the same: give viewers something fresh and entertaining.
Come to think of it, the channels run by Solfa Studio seem very deliberately positioned, right down to their names.
Yoon Sung-won: Looking at the pattern, I seem to take one of two approaches to channel names: either keep them extremely simple or choose something that makes people ask, “What is that?” and gives them something to talk about. Our designer came up with the core idea for “helloiamwoninicetomeetyou” and told us that design trends had moved beyond cool and simple toward something more “clingy.” At the time, hardly anyone knew RESCENE anyway, so there was no point in trying to play it cool. Instead, we went to the opposite extreme and made the name a full-on introduction. Early on, the comment we heard most was, “Is this really an official channel? It feels like a fan channel.” We’re always told to change the channel name, but once the channel takes off, what seemed like a drawback usually becomes a strength (laughs).
I also found the “HUP!” and “Chilsung Label” channels interesting for the subtle twists they each put on familiar music-content formats.
Yoon Sung-won: One of my personal favorites is “The JB Show” on “HUP!” The starting point was, “Want to watch rookie idols tell off senior idols for acting childish — in English?” Again, we used their social roles as the hook. If the pitch had simply been, “JULIE and BELLE from KISS OF LIFE are in it — want to watch?” It would have felt more like content made for existing fans. So we built the format to appeal to a much broader audience, including people who didn’t know JULIE or BELLE.
People often say the YouTube market is saturated. Is there still such a thing as a genuinely new idea?
Yoon Sung-won: I’ve been hearing for years that the market is saturated. Looking back, there’s never really been a time when it wasn’t fiercely competitive (laughs). Nothing is truly new; there are only things that feel fresh to people. It’s all relative. So what I’m really chasing is that sense of newness. It’s the same reason fashion moves in cycles: a trend someone grew tired of twenty years ago can feel new to someone else twenty years later. The style itself is the same, but the way people respond to it changes. Something that made people say, “Wow, that’s new,” last year can have them saying, “They’re still doing that? It’s boring,” just one year later. That makes it incredibly difficult. But every era has its own zeitgeist, so I consume a lot of media and, as a consumer myself, pay attention to what people seem to enjoy watching at any given moment.
You’ve been part of the YouTube ecosystem since its early days. How have you seen the zeitgeist change over time?
Yoon Sung-won: It’s not about finding something that has never existed before. It’s about understanding what feels new in this particular moment. Newness always follows a dialectical cycle: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. When something new becomes the dominant trend, people flock to it. Once it reaches a certain saturation point, people grow tired of it, something else emerges, and the cycle starts all over again. I’ve been running YouTube channels for about ten years, and it has always worked that way. When a particular format becomes too common, people tire of it, and then someone comes along with something that feels new.
At this point, I’m curious what made you want to “put an idol on the map through YouTube.”
Yoon Sung-won: Over the years, there were many times when one of our videos did well and got people talking about whoever appeared in it. Since we are, fundamentally, a production company, we started thinking beyond simply making videos: “What other value could we create? How could we be part of what happens next?” Once we started looking at the size of the market as a whole, we saw a whole other world of possibilities. We felt that by being part of that process, we could show more of what we were capable of as a production company.
Three years ago, in a post on Solfa Studio’s Instagram, you reflected on the challenges of running “ODG” and shared a director’s description of himself as “someone who makes films for a living — not an auteur or an artist.” Now that you’ve entered a new chapter with “helloiamwoninicetomeetyou,” how do you see things today?
Yoon Sung-won: I still see myself as someone who does this for a living. I posted those screengrabs of a Kiyoshi Kurosawa interview because even someone of his stature said he saw himself less as an artist than as someone simply doing the work that came his way (laughs). Who was I to pretend to be something more? It made no sense. I just felt I should focus on doing my best, both with the work that came my way and the work I wanted to pursue.
Looking ahead, what are you unwilling to compromise on in your work?
Yoon Sung-won: Autonomy. Every team needs people who are good at executing someone else’s vision. We have team members like that, and I rely on them. But for me, autonomy is what drew me to this line of work. If all I did was exactly what I was asked, I don’t think I’d have any reason to do it. When we began working on “Chilsung Label,” the client respected what we had built and gave us a great deal of creative freedom. That made the work more enjoyable for us, and fortunately, the first video performed well. It created a virtuous cycle and made it easier to get buy-in internally. Of course, if I’m going to do things my way, I have to be able to back that up with results. There are inevitably times when we can’t reach an agreement, even after discussing something at length. When that happens, I compromise on that point, then find room elsewhere to shape things the way I want. I know I can’t have everything my way, but I still want to hold on to the feeling that I’m making what I want to make.