By Mark Peterson
If you don’t know who Sam Richards is, you don’t watch YouTube. He is a YouTube megastar and a fan of Korea who is well known throughout the Asian country as the professor from Penn State University who discovered Korea in recent years and features it in some of his online lectures.
His lectures are unique. First, they are held in a large, 800-person, auditorium. Second, the lectures are recorded and posted on his channel. Prof. Richards has a unique and absolutely fascinating way of handling this mega-class. Whereas, most professors consider teaching in such a large classroom as a real nightmare, Richards handles the class with amazing cleverness and he carefully and graciously brings students into the discussion.
In fact, his lectures are more like discussions — he utilizes student experiences to present the material. He often invites students to the front of the class to help him explore the topic he wants to cover.
Technologically, it’s very appealing because he has five cameras filming his every move. And he moves! He often goes into the aisleways of the auditorium to get responses from students. It has a polished and dynamic feel, although Richards is quick to point out that all his video filming and editing staff are students.
And of course, the thing that has brought him to the attention of Koreans on YouTube is the fact that he sometimes examines Korea, or one aspect of something Korean. The class is Sociology 119: “Race, Ethnicity, and Culture,” and it covers the whole world! Literally. Richards started as a Latin American specialist, but he has spent a significant amount of time in the Middle East and other areas of the world. But it’s his classes that focus on Korea, or the part of one class that looks at Korea for a few moments, that has come to the attention of the Korean YouTube audience.
The turning point was one class where Richards looked at some very interesting things about Korea. In many of his classes he will cite an interesting statistic or unusual fact about a particular nation or culture, and then he will bore in on that idea to reveal several layers of cultural meaning for that country.
He is remarkably non-judgmental — he’s not out to say one culture is better than another, and he is very careful to be respectful of customs that might easily be misunderstood. And he is extremely respectful and cautious to show respect and support for the students he brings up to illustrate the points he want to make. He class is large — the 800 capacity auditorium is filled — and for a world-class university like Penn State, there are students from all over the world, and they become his informants and specialists on given days.
He was surprised to become a media star in Korea. He didn’t plan it at all. But in one of his videos, a segment was on “Korean Cool” or “something like that,” he said, and he looked at how Korea has developed and how Korea is doing things that are “world class,” notably the best in the world. One of those items centered on entertainment, and Richards holds a speciality within sociology as an ethnomusicologist, and he predicted that BTS was going to be a major player in the musical world. He posted the number “45 Million” on the screen and asks the class to tell him what that might mean. The answer was that was the number of recordings that BTS sold within 24 hours of releasing their new album. That was a record that broke the previous record by Taylor Swift. (Taylor Swift has since gone on to retake that record, but at the time….)
He asked how many students knew of BTS. Seven hands went up. Only seven out of 800. He then predicted that all of them would soon know BTS, as would their parents and maybe their grandparents. He made some predictions and said that students going on study abroad, rather than going to a European city, would be smart to go to Seoul.
That video went viral in Korea. Today, his videos, both authorized and unauthorized, have had an estimated 100 million views. Many people know his name, but if they don’t know his name, they know he’s the professor on YouTube at Penn State or somewhere with the big auditorium. He is greatly loved and appreciated in Korea.
Korean media reps have gone to Penn State to film him. Many, many channels in Korea feature him as an example of how Korea is — finally — getting some of the recognition it deserves.
And last month, Richards and I were in Korea at the same time and we finally got to meet. And yes, we did an interview for my YouTube channel. So, thanks, Sam, and keep up the good work telling the great story of Korean culture to the world.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is a professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
Sam Richards, YouTube phenom
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28.01.2024
By Mark Peterson If you don’t know who Sam Richards is, you don’t watch YouTube. He is a YouTube megastar and a fan of Korea who is well known throughout the Asian country as the professor from Penn State University who discovered Korea in recent years and features it in some of his online lectures.
His lectures are unique. First, they are held in a large, 800-person, auditorium. Second, the lectures are recorded and posted on his channel. Prof. Richards has a unique and absolutely fascinating way of handling this mega-class. Whereas, most professors consider teaching in such a large classroom as a real nightmare, Richards handles the class with amazing cleverness and he carefully and graciously brings students into the discussion.
In fact, his lectures are more like discussions — he utilizes student experiences to present the material. He often invites students to the front of the class to help him explore the topic he wants to cover.
Technologically, it’s very appealing because he has five cameras filming his every move. And he moves! He often goes into the aisleways of the auditorium to get responses from students. It has a polished and dynamic feel, although Richards........
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