2 Days & 1 Night premiered on August 5, 2007, on KBS. It isn’t much of a stretch to say that on that day, the Korean variety show landscape saw the dawn of the Na Yeong-seok era. He was then the producer of the show. His catalog which includes 2 Days & 1 Night, Grandpas Over Flowers, New Journey to the West, and Youn’s Kitchen that aired on tvN is, in and of itself, the history of Korean variety shows. And he started a live show with his long-time colleague and writer Kim Dae Joo on May 26, 2023, on the YouTube channel Fullmoon which is run by his company Egg is Coming. He said that he learned all there is to know about YouTube from YouTuber Calm Down Man. I couldn’t help but ask why the best television variety show producer decided to become a YouTuber, and what sort of future a person who was and still is the best, dreams of. 

​You announced that you would learn the know-hows of running a YouTube channel by appearing on the YouTube channel Calm Down Man, and then you started your own live show on Fullmoon, almost right away. 

Na Yeong-seok: I picked his brain while appearing on Comic Bros with Calm Down Man. I asked him, “How would someone go about running a YouTube channel?” I wanted to see how Calm Down Man handles things first hand because I didn’t think I would be able to really understand it any other way. I thought, why would anyone watch a show run by an ordinary person? It wasn’t like celebrities appeared in them. But then I saw how Calm Down Man achieved personal growth on his channel. I saw things done on his channel that I had only mused about, and they actually worked. I called Calm Down Man as soon as I came back after the shoot and asked him for the contacts of the person setting up the live studio. I didn’t even know what sort of show I wanted to do, but I asked them to set everything up in two days because we were going live in three.

Why did you choose the live show format as the key to your change? 

Na Yeong-seok: I believed our YouTube channel Fullmoon needed a change. I had no idea how things would turn out, but I knew we weren’t getting anywhere without change. We had our own channel, but we couldn’t do anything like Kwaktube. YouTubers like Kwaktube do everything from appearing on the show down to producing it, but we don’t appear in our shows. We first started Fullmoon with the idea that we could invite the New Journey to the West members to star as guests, one at a time, and make a fun and casual show. But no matter what we intended, we could never keep it casual if we were going to invite celebrities. So, we wondered what the issue was. That’s when it hit us: what we were doing on YouTube wasn’t much different from what we were doing on TV. 

Come to think of it, you started producing New Journey to the West in the style of YouTube and it seems like you’re starting to grasp the nature of the platform.

Na Yeong-seok: That’s right. We finally figured it out years into running our channel. What YouTuber invites guests all the time on their channel? No one. They’re their own guest. We told ourselves, this is YouTube, it has to be different from TV, but in reality, we never changed anything.

Why do you need to change?

Na Yeong-seok: Until now, there were the guest stars who were like the sun, and we were the moon orbiting the Earth. But now we had to become the sun ourselves. I thought that if we couldn’t make this happen then there was no reason for us to go on YouTube. I wanted to show the world what Egg is Coming is all about, and that anyone who is a part of this company is a true professional in the field. I also wanted people to know that each and every one of us is incredibly interesting. I also want to show that the guys who were in these YouTube videos make amazing TV programs. 

​Is this why you insisted on holding a sports competition with the Egg is Coming staff, and make content out of it? To get the viewers to notice? 

Na Yeong-seok: Exactly. When I went on Calm Down Man, I said that we wouldn’t film our sports competition. Everyone hates getting on film. But after Calm Down Man aired, and we did our Fullmoon live, we got a lot of positive responses. So, we had to seriously reconsider. We had to shoot it. 

That’s a very YouTube-esque development. It’s similar to how the things the idols talk about with their fans on Weverse goes viral then gets made into content. Some people get noticed by the viewers too, like the excellent badminton player in the sports competition.

Na Yeong-seok: That’s exactly the route we are hoping to go down. After the sports episode, a lot of the viewers have started to seek certain people out. Although many people appear on the episode, some will always stand out more than the others, and the viewers kindly tell us who they are in the comments. They were telling us, “show us this person more” or “tell us more about that in the next episode.”

Your staff are appearing in the live shows and pushing ahead with filming things like the sports competition. But like Calm Down Man said, it’s like walking on a tightrope in front of an audience. 

Na Yeong-seok: People like me - we’re well known already, so I thought that we could use that to our advantage. We’re using me as a leverage to help our other colleagues gain more recognition. If they do well, then it’s good for me, too. I benefit from more people thinking “people trained by Na Yeong-seok are different,” or “he really made a show out of something he was joking about on the live show, that company is really something else.” It’s high risk, sure, but it’s also high return. But the production crew is more used to making the shows behind the scenes, and it’s only natural for them to doubt a show’s success with them appearing in it. If I was absolutely confident, then I would have stopped everything else and revamped the whole channel in one go, but I wasn’t sure either. That uncertainty made things a bit ambiguous for a while. 

How did you turn around the situation? 

Na Yeong-seok: We turned the page after appearing in Comic Bros, and airing The Game Caterers “SEVENTEEN” episode. I assigned a new project to The Game Caterers team. The “SEVENTEEN” episode did really well, and the members were really great during the shoot - we could tell that they truly cared for one another, but we thought that that was a good stopping point. Some of the staff were taking some time off after Jinny’s Kitchen ended recently, so I convinced them, saying “let’s make YouTube videos for a while. We’re not too concerned with the views, so you can take it easy.” That’s how we got started. 

It must not have been an easy decision to end something so popular and create content that focused on the staff. 

Na Yeong-seok: Celebrities have their own filmography and fans, but people like us who make the shows don’t. We were always behind the scenes. I thought that to people like us, our memories and the things we experienced while creating the shows would be our biggest source of content, so our first show was with writer Kim Dae Joo, whom I share a lot of memories with. But then a show with nothing, not even on-screen subtitles hit more than a million views, and that’s when I knew that I wasn’t wrong to start this. The other producers were surprised that people wanted to hear what we had to say. So, I got more producers to appear on the show. I want people from the production crew who can really anchor the whole show, people like Seo-jin who I can ask, “I can’t pay you but it’s a casual show, just come and chat” to appear on our show. 

​Producer Lee Eun-kyung, and writer Chae Jin-ah of the hit Netflix show Siren: Survive the Island, and two Egg is Coming assistant directors appeared on your show. Is there a reason why you invited much younger women on your show, who are completely different from Kim Dae Joo?

Na Yeong-seok: The episode featuring Kim Dae Joo hit a million views. If it was me in the past, I would have tried to hit 1.5 million views by making a show with Kim Dae Joo, Na Yeong-seok, and then adding someone else in between. Then a celebrity would have appeared in the next one. We’ve always been swayed by our viewers. But Calm Down Man said that if one episode is a hit, then you have to do something that’s a bit boring the next, even on purpose. That’s how you can keep yourself upright without tumbling over. I really took that to heart. A veteran writer like Kim Dae Joo and I would have a lot to talk about because we have a lot of memories together. That would definitely create buzz, but if we were to only do that, then we would be climbing a really steep cliff that we would eventually fall off of. I thought that I should chat with the younger staff who are just starting out, too. They might not get as many views, but I thought that we had to accept that to keep our show running for longer. 

The younger staff were bringing up really new things. Like how you casually telling your assistant directors to postpone the cable TV show airing for a day can set off a whole chain of events for the rest of the staff. 

Na Yeong-seok: It helped a lot. Now that we have a lot of teams, I don’t get to know the junior directors and writers very well. So, it leaves a mark on me when I get to listen to things like that firsthand. Of course I knew that cable TV shows put a lot of pressure on them, but I pretended not to notice. (laughs) But hearing about it directly from the staff really opened my eyes to how much of a stressful situation it would be for them. I’m trying to do better these days.

In the episode featuring the assistant directors, you said that you would stop making impromptu decisions on set  depending on the circumstance at hand. I imagine the circumstance on site impacts the show a lot. Do you not have any reservations over giving up on your ability to make quick calls regarding these variables, which is arguably your competitive edge? 

Na Yeong-seok: I was half joking and half serious. I said that I wouldn’t do that anymore to spice things up for YouTube, but I’m not completely opposed to giving it up either. I know that what I’ve been doing puts a lot of pressure on the staff. I picture the Yangtze River in my head slowly flowing when I make these decisions. There’s no stopping that kind of flow. The next generation staff seems to be really afraid of the uncertainties of having to think on their feet. They want something more organized, and a clear-cut role. They want to be able to predict how much time they need to spend editing, and then live their lives during the rest. Of course, they understand that making certain decisions on the spot, like you mentioned, is inevitable. But that being said, what I said on YouTube isn’t all talk. Some things must be fixed before going into the shoot, and should there be a need for a change in direction on the spot, I need to explain to the staff why to get everybody on the same page. 

The sports competition episode was entitled “God of Communication.” Communication with the staff must be important. 

Na Yeong-seok: Before, the producer and the writer made impromptu decisions like, “it would be really funny if we ran away without telling the rest of the staff!” People would have no idea what was going on and get dragged along the way. I would look back on the situation and think it was really funny, but it could have been alienating for some people. Now, the crew is bigger, and the roles are much more specialized - one person would only look at the helicam, and another would only check audio, for example. So now it takes longer for crucial decisions to reach all the way down to the capillaries. We can’t completely eliminate making quick decisions on the spot, but it’s also true that we have to work in different ways with the sort of staff we have now. Some things can’t be helped, but I try to minimize issues as much as possible. 

As someone who made many successful shows over the past 20 years, isn’t it difficult to accept that some things you did were wrong, and that you have to make changes? 

Na Yeong-seok: People might think that my biggest role is planning the programs and directing them, but that only takes up about 30% of my time. I use much more energy on creating the best team, like “this person needs someone like so-and-so, so if I bring them here, we can have ourselves a really good team for making a show.” What we do is all about the people. We constantly try to make our team better, and to do that, I always thought that I should be ready to change the way I think. I am scared that I might fall off the tightrope that I mentioned, while talking about things like this on YouTube live. I’m scared of seeing reactions like, “that Na Yeong-seok is a total authoritative bum!” Haha. 

You said your dream is “to become a true leader” when you were pushing for filming the sports competition. 

Na Yeong-seok: Creators are never satisfied. We get irritable if we don’t get everything from A to Z exactly the way we want them to be. I’m a little less like that, but I do get quite stressed when I work. I was the happiest when I worked on just one program a year. When we worked on 2 Days & 1 Night, I was on cloud nine taking care of the actors and the staff, even if I worked myself to death. I was the leader when I worked on 2 Days & 1 Night, and I’ll continue to be the leader. But then the assistant directors can’t stay assistant directors forever as long as they work with me. That’s not why they became a producer. I did a lot of programs as the co-director with a lot of my staff, but it wasn’t easy getting myself to do what they wanted. In reality, I pretended to listen to them and then did as I pleased. I’ve arrived at a point where I shouldn’t do that anymore. My dream is to have many different professional teams that can make good programs independently, without my hand in them. Perhaps it’s a bit like HYBE’s multi-label structure. (laughs)

If that’s your aim, then how should you go about running the company? 

Na Yeong-seok: I can’t manage everything from A to Z like before, so I’m planning to provide consultation on just the key issues and leave the rest to the staff. I want to divide the people into different teams, and get them to work independently without our intervention, but there’s bound to be a lot of challenges. They have to have their own purposes and meaning for doing what they do. They’ll want to be at the core, having set foot in this industry. That’s why I want to make a structure that allows the different teams in the variety show branch of Egg is Coming to act more independently. I think YouTube is a way for us to support them from the backend. 

During your live, you mentioned that you stopped editing since Grandpas Over Flowers. That got me wondering: what is the most important quality in  a “true leader”? (laughs) 

Na Yeong-seok: I’m currently working on Earth Arcade, and I think we’re getting a fairly good response. So, I’ve stopped worrying about it so much. Other than the tasks that I absolutely must be involved in, I let Park Hyun-yong and Bae Kyoungsuk, the producer and writer, take the lead. But I do need to stay on the job during the planning of the show and before Park and Bae are appointed to the Earth Arcade team. I also have to think of a producer and writer who can support them in case they get stressed out. And then when the program finds its groove, I feel a sense of accomplishment, and I can finally let them be just like I wanted all along. What people like me are spending the most energy on at the moment is making new projects. We involve ourselves in the early planning stages, so much so that it almost feels like nagging. And then we choose the main producer and writer who can make the project work, then after that, we have to add more staff who have different dispositions, get the team together, cast the actors, so that it can take off just like Earth Arcade. 

​“Who should I partner this person with?”, “Is this person up to the task?” “Who else should I add to the roster?” All of this is about the people. Do you have a set of criteria for determining who should work with whom? 

Na Yeong-seok: I think long and hard about which three to four leaders I should bring in in order to form a team that I can completely trust. They’re the main producer, main writer, second producer, and second writer. The rest of the staff depends on these four people. I don’t have a set of numerical criteria per se, but I get a good idea of what sort of person they are if I work with them for a long time. This is how I categorize people: A New Journey to the West-type person or and a Three Meals a Day-type person. The two shows are completely different. One is about playing games and laughing a lot while the other is contemplative and quietly follows a story. People are generally in one camp or the other. Then I see if the person focuses more on their tasks at hand, or if they keep tabs on the goings-on around them. 

It sounds simple, but you seem to have insights on what makes people tick, and how they work. 

Na Yeong-seok: If you focus on what you do, then you might not be able to see what’s going on around you. If you keep tabs on what’s going on around you, you might not excel at your task, but then you can convince the whole team to get on board with you. I tend to mix the two types of people. I was under a lot of pressure to make Earth Arcade successful no matter what, which is why I put in the strongest person I could think of at the time. Someone like Park Hyun-yong. Someone who had the knack for directing and is very talented. Then I had to make a team that could support him with their talent, and another that could support him emotionally. Of course, it wasn’t their explicit mission. They never really know that that’s what their roles are. (laughs) 

In that sense, the cast on Earth Arcade is really interesting. In terms of the cast, there’s usually a mix of people you’ve worked with before and new people in your shows. This was the case with Jinny’s Kitchen. But you’ve never worked with the cast of Earth Arcade. Also, there’s a significant age gap with you - in essence, they are like polar opposites of you. 

Na Yeong-seok: That’s right. There’s so much talk of the MZs these days - I didn’t just want to talk about them, I wanted to cast them, and we decided on an all-female cast. After that we put the names of about 50 candidates up on the wall. There’s something that we always say during casting meetings: there’s always the right answer among these names. It’s just that we don’t know which one it is yet. (laughs) But we did well for Earth Arcade. It was half sheer luck, to be honest. We all agreed that we used up ten years’ worth of luck after shooting the first episode. Like you said, the cast is completely different from the kind of person I am. They’re part of a generation I know nothing about, and we only had Young Ji in mind for the core member. She’s really one of a kind, and from a different generation. I thought that if we set everything to her tone, then she could be the main pillar of the show. The person who nobody expected to be cast was Mimi. 

In what way?

Na Yeong-seok: Young Ji is the quintessential Gen MZ, Yu-jin is a popular idol, comedian Eun-ji bridges everyone together - they were all plausible casts. But not many people knew much about Mimi. When we cast people, we do a lot of research, and in depth. Mimi had been running her own YouTube channel and I really liked that she was an idol but also was very down to earth. She was determined to pave her own path in this world. Park Hyun-yong said that he liked Mimi, and after that she was mentioned by different people a couple more times. I’m convinced when I hear people say the same thing in separate, unrelated instances. If someone says, “Mimi is so funny” I just laugh, but then I come home and tally up, “two points!” (laughs) That’s my thought process. If I hear her name mentioned again, I think it’s fate. That’s how we cast Mimi. 

​In Jinny’s Kitchen, V was added to a cast that already worked together before. There was an all-new vibe when they discussed their working conditions, and after Lee Seo-jin became the CEO, there was a shift in the cast dynamic. A lot changed even if the premise and most of the cast stayed the same.

Na Yeong-seok: I thought that was really interesting. Taehyung was never a permanent member of a show other than HYBE’s proprietary content. But he’s very intelligent. Just after about two or three days in, he got a hang of the flow, and knew what he had to do to make the show fun. He worked really hard, too. What you said was noticeable, too, so I thought we could make something unique. The response was positive, too. It’s really hard to get that sort of rating these days. But I was criticized for repeating the same format, and I understood where they were coming from, so I was a bit disheartened. 

The show is  centered around different situations that arise under universal themes like travel or playing simple games, but with different people. Could we call that repetition? 

Na Yeong-seok: That was exactly our thought when we started. It was the same format of running a restaurant, but Youn Yuh-jung dominated the tone of the show when she was in it. But when the program revolved around Lee Seo-jin, the tone changed around him, so there was a big difference. Also, it was the first time Taehyung and Woo-shik went abroad together, and we expected that the chemistry from their friendship could contribute to the show as well. But what I was mistaken was that this program was no longer the only one of its kind, without any competition. We also had Taehyung, who I thought was a huge card. We had a stellar cast and a program that we knew worked so we thought that it had to succeed. (laughs) But similar programs appeared starting last year. The viewers used to think that it was a fun watch when it would come on every once in a while, but now it’s not like that anymore. The time came when we had to change the structure a bit, but we were too attached to the pre-existing brand, so it didn’t exactly go as planned. I was a bit let down, but now I am even more determined to revamp the whole show and make it even more entertaining. We are the original, after all. 

I think that the issues you mentioned are related to the changes in the content market today. Your shows illustrate the characters of the cast and the relationship among them over a simple premise while they play simple games, so we can say that they are a universally loved and accepted program. But OTT variety shows today like those on Netflix tend to get a handful of viewers deeply immersed so that they would talk about it with their peers and spread through word of mouth. YouTube is even more strongly catered to personal tastes. Now that variety shows are more fragmented than ever, what are some of your thoughts on coming up with new programs? 

Na Yeong-seok: I think it’s a huge concern for us. And that there’s no answer. I haven’t seen the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, but I think the title tells us a lot about the content world today. There’s everything. Everywhere. Right now, at this moment. There are so many platforms and so much content. Everything already exists, and nothing gets 10 million views like in the past. The most we get is 50 thousand, 100 thousand, and I think it’ll stay this way from now on. People like us, who are used to making something that is intended to garner the most views, need to change how we think. Jinny’s Kitchen is a show that’s made to get a lot of views. We have cast members that cover all generations who portray stories that are accepted by everyone under a universal theme. This sort of show will probably not do very well going forward. That’s what I think. 

Perhaps it means that the pie is getting that much smaller. Things would be difficult without getting investments from large OTTs like Netflix. 

Na Yeong-seok: We’re in the process of searching for new directions. We’ll keep Jinny’s Kitchen airing, but we are keeping in mind that we might need to consider the niche market a bit more. In the past, we chose one out of three or four, but now we’re choosing one out of 30, 40, even hundreds. It’s like selling 100 thousand of many different models of cars instead of selling a million of the same. We may have had economy of scale when we sold a million cars, but perhaps the customers are more loyal to the cars that sell 100 thousand. What can we do to make that happen? We have to add a hidden code that only they like. But what is that? These are the things that I think about. 

I found it very interesting when you had an Egg is Coming staff fan meet in Taiwan. Perhaps there’s something special about you if you can do that abroad. 

Na Yeong-seok: At first, Kim Dae Joo, Choi Jaeyoung and I went and asked what it was like for them when we made these shows. But exactly 1,000 fans turned up for our latest fan meeting. 1,000 is a lot of people when you are actually there to see them in person. If such a fan meet could grow to include 5,000 fans, we might really be onto something here. Which gets me thinking, should we hold a fan meet here in Korea?

I’m down for that. (Laughs) It would also be funny if nobody turned up. 

Na Yeong-seok: You’re right. (laughs) 

You mentioned before that you went to see the cherry blossoms late at night with the producer and writer for Siren: Survive the Island. I heard that you said, “No matter how well you do, you’re all a part of me.” (laughs) But it turns out that the “me” from “you’re all a part of me” did incredibly well. (laughs) 

Na Yeong-seok: They did even better later on. Thank you. (laughs) 

You have been the most important person in the Korean variety show scene for the past 20 years. What drives you to keep pushing yourself with the issues that you mentioned today? 

Na Yeong-seok: First and foremost, it’s personal ambition. I talked about this with Young Ji recently. I do it out of habit. Once you get hooked to the joy of success, you seek it out without much thought. Second, I always had goals that motivated me through every chapter of my life. The thing about us is that we don’t plan even a year ahead, let alone five. We only look at what we’re dealt with right now. I think that’s how I lived for the past 20 years. But the biggest thing on my mind right now is, I’m working on a new project, and I really want it to do well. That’s all I’m thinking of. There are many people who are involved, too - producers, writers. I think I feel responsible for them. It would be great if they could make a leap forward in life with this project. These things are what give me meaning these days. It’s not that I’m selfless, but I truly believe that their step forward is my step forward. That thought gets reinforced the more I work.