A few years ago, the most popular character was Pororo, which was a penguin with an innocent and cute attitude. However, another penguin character appeared recently and is now becoming incredibly popular quickly. A new penguin character, Pengsoo, however, is rather tough and blunt.

▲ Penguin Character Pengsoo

Pengsoo was a penguin character that first appeared at the EBS channel in March. Pengsoo soon started its YouTube channel with about 3,000 subscribers. However, as time went by and Pengsoo appearing at the program more, the channel became popular and popular, and now, the channel has more than 1,400,000 subscribers. The merchandise about Pengsoo was sold out in extraordinarily short time, such as the essay diary of Pengsoo and “Pengsoo for today, Pengsoo for tomorrow” are on bestsellers. Also, even many companies are waiting for Pengsoo to be their advertisement model. For example, a garment brand, SPAO, has cooperated with the character. The result was successful. Numerous people were eager to buy the product and even resellers who buy the product and sell it at a more expensive price appeared. Pengsoo is now undoubtedly the hottest character.

▲ YouTube Channel of Pengsoo

Then, what makes Pengsoo that popular? Pengsoo is just a man wearing a big penguin-shaped doll with a unique voice and pronunciation. However, many people say that the frank and confident characteristics of Pengsoo are the points that they fell attractive about him. Pengsoo shows resistance to the vertical and authoritative system which makes people feel catharsis. It calls the name of EBS president, Kim Myung-joong without any title and tells that he will leave the office in a confident manner. While he seems to be strong to those people, he is often kind to people in difficulty. That characteristics of being both kind and blunt are what makes Pengsoo attractive.

▲ Pengsoo Calling His Name Without Title

It may seem strange that the fans of Pengsoo rather does not try to identify who the man behind the penguin mask is. Arguing about who Pengsoo is, those fans refuse to analyze it. They do not prefer the trial of recognizing the gender and identity of Pengsoo.
Scholars' analysis says that South Korea is now being passionate about B-list things. Wassup-man, Work-man, and Pengsoo prove that. Moreover, according to the analysis, Pengsoo should be managed in a human managing system just like the character “Gumamon” from Japan.

27th, Dec 2019

Park Ye-seo