Wednesday, 21 April 2021

[theqoo] YOUTUBER KOREAN ENGLISHMAN MADE A COMMUNITY POST

Hi guys. Josh here. I know it’s been a long time, and I’ve had a lot of time to think and reflect over the last half a year. To be honest it's easily been the worst 6 months of our lives, and so much stuff has happened that I hardly know where to begin. 

You may have seen from Ollie's instagram that we're going to be coming back with some new content on YouTube soon. But before we upload anything I want to share what has been on my heart and in my thoughts throughout this time, apologise, and express my gratitude for you.

I think it would also be helpful to acknowledge what exactly happened, especially as I still receive messages and comments from some of you who have no idea why we stopped uploading in the first place.

Firstly, let me be clear, last October Gabie and I messed up. We took stupid, unnecessary risks by inviting people to the apartment we were quarantining in after arriving in Korea from the UK. I thought at the time that as long as people didn't come in, and we didn't leave, that it would be ok. Looking back now, this was obviously wrong.

6 months down the line it's just become more and more clear to me that it was a huge lapse in judgement. It was wrong for us to do it, and to film it and upload a video of it to Gabie's channel. Honestly I wish that I could take it all back and just spend that day isolated in quarantine as we obviously should have... but I can't. I'm sorry that we took the risk and took Korea's hospitality and safety for granted, and to you all who expected more from us, who have given us this platform in the first place. To all of you who have been so supportive and loving to us over the years only to be let down by my actions. And although I've communicated it many times to them in person, I should just publicly say I'm sorry to our whole team. To Ollie, to our editors, and to our partners in Korea, all who did nothing wrong themselves, but have had countless sleepless nights and genuinely life-damaging stress and mental health difficulties because of what I did. 

After we messed up, things escalated very quickly. The initial reaction was on the internet, but within a day or so mainstream media and news outlets picked it up and it became a top news story. As I mentioned before, a politician in Korea grabbed hold of the attention the situation was gathering, and in a public court setting used us as an example of foreigners who are taking advantage of Korea, falsely accusing us of not paying our taxes and of breaking the law in various ways. This of course spurred on a whole new round of media articles about us.

After the last video that I uploaded, to be honest my mental health was really falling apart, and I was trying my best to not keep looking for the new stories and trending forum posts that were being written about us. But I was told that the focus had shifted somewhat from us and more specifically onto Gabie. People started questioning whether or not she was genuinely Korean, because she was born in Argentina and spent a long time living abroad, and this became a new focus. Then the story shifted to whether or not she had been correctly paying her health insurance in Korea, and a whole new set of articles were released about this (Gabie will soon talk about these issues herself. Again, sorry it’s taken us so long). 

At about this time an official police investigation had been opened up against Gabie because of what we had done, and to get to the bottom of whether we had actually broken the law (again, this became national news).

Over the last 6 months I don't think we dealt with this whole process very well. We tried... and I spent hours and days and nights talking to people close to me, to friends, to our team, even to a PR team and lawyers about what we should do next and how we should respond. But I don't know if there are any measures you can take that can prepare you to deal with the pressures and stresses of facing the scrutiny of a nation's media, on top of the public shaming of the internet in response to a mistake. 

I've had people tell me to just ignore the comments… but the problem is that it's not that simple. We DID make a mistake, and I can understand that people would be disappointed and angry at us... but whatever process a person would normally go through to try and reconcile a mistake doesn't really apply when it's public to this level, to the extent that at certain points in this process it can feel like reconciliation is impossible. This can lead to irrational thinking, feeling trapped and completely powerless, and extremely unhealthy thought spirals. Over the last few months on several occasions I've thought to myself that the hardest thing about my mistake is the effect it has had on the people around me... seeing the pain and stress I've caused and knowing I can't make it right is hard to handle.

After a period of time where I personally couldn’t handle thinking about work, we’ve since had time to think, more than we ever have, about what KoreanEnglishman is, and what we want it to be. I’ve rediscovered that I am most happy when I’m sharing what I love, and been reminded that what I’m most passionate to share is Korean culture. Bringing people together across different cultures, and sharing community, is what lies at the heart of us as a channel, and that’s the core of the content we want to make again. 

Getting to the place that we are now as a team has been a really long journey, and the love and support from you all has been an enormous source of strength to us throughout that journey. To all of you who have messaged us, shown us so much patience, and given me this time to reflect and mature, thank you. I’m sorry that it’s taken so long. And I know this message is long; I’ve tried to be as honest and open as I can, I feel that I owe you this much at least. 

This time has made me more and more appreciative for you all, and we as a team will try our best to bring you the best content we can while staying true to the heart of this channel that you subscribed to. 
Thank you. 
Josh

original post: here

1. He said that this was an apology post but it's just full of excuses?

2. So what was his answer for his controversy? All he's doing is whining and saying how hard he had it...

3. The magical time of 6 monthsㅋㅋ (T/n: a lot of people are calling him and Gabbie out for this "6 months time frame". Basically, YouTube does reserve the right, at its discretion, to remove monetization from channels if a channel is inactive and not uploading or posting Community posts for 6 months or more. The last time they all posted or wrote something was 6 months ago.)

4. Just seeing how he's posting something after 6 months, you can see his intentions right away.....

5. Because of the monetization issue, he's coming back after 6 months. He didn't reflect at all

6. He needs to post within 6 months to keep his monetization. Anyways, I don't watch him so I hope he's living well

7. Ha.. this is f*cking long ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ f*ck

8. So the conclusion was that he was having a hard time?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

9. The law of the 6 months

10. Up until some time, I was watching his channel just fine but then, he started to look too crazy for money so I stopped watching. His channel became boring too

11. I unsubscribed so I haven't watched him at all. I don't care whether or not it will be hard for him to return

12. We can't support this kind of person!

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