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That Lady in The Viral BBC Video is Not a Nanny, Moron

AvatarMax Chang
March 12, 2017

A humorous video featuring some playful toddlers was all over social media the other day, but along with it was also a “viral” display of a dangerous stereotype.

The scene was from a BBC television interview with a professor living in South Korea, which became suddenly awkward after his two young children came crashing into the footage halfway their serious discussion. The adorable “uninvited guests” immediately became instant internet celebrities after the video went viral.

Featured in the interview was Pusan National University associate professor  Robert E. Kelly who was giving his insight on North and South Korean relations. In the clip, an Asian woman can also be seen entering the scene and hurryingly removing the toddlers from the televised view.

Right after the broadcast, the professor was asked by his interviewer via Twitter: “@Robert_E_Kelly Nicely handled interruption Professor! Do you have any objection to me sharing the clip of that moment on BBC News?”

“@David_Waddell What would that mean, please? Re-broadcasting it on BBC TV, or just here on Twitter? Is this kinda thing that goes ‘viral’ and gets weird?”

And go viral, the video did, amassing hundreds of thousands of views within hours. The “weirdness” part came after netizens began to comment on the woman who many assumed was the nanny of the kids.

Twitter and Facebook users even noted that the “nanny” looked scared or afraid for her job. Time, in an article which has since been updated, dubbed her initially as the “frenzied nanny” while a British tabloid referred to her as the “horrified nanny.”

However, the woman in the video is the professor’s Korean wife: Jung-a Kim.

During an episode of ITV’s Saturday Night Takeaway, hosts Ant and Dec made fun of the incident, similarly calling the woman as the nanny.

“”Hello professor! Professor, professor… oh… he’s busy… he’s not ready. He’s not ready, he’s got his hands full. Him and the nanny have got their hands full so we won’t go to him,” Ant McPartlin said.

Viewers immediately pointed out the error.

“Ant & Dec just called the woman in the Robert Kelly video ‘the nanny’….disgraceful assumption tbh #SaturdayNightTakeaway,” a viewer of the show tweeted.

“Did Ant just refer to #RobertKelly wife as the nanny? @itvtakeaway #Takeaway,” another posted on Twitter.

Another one wrote: “#Takeaway @antanddec Ant, I think you will find it is the Professor and his wife in Hong Kong. Not the ‘nanny’! Also said it was Hong Kong, not South Korea. I’m off to BBC4.”

Was assuming that Ms. Kim was the nanny a sign of white-centric bias?  When people immediately go assuming that the type of relationship between whites and people of color can only be of an employer to employee, something is definitely wrong. 

According to Phil Yu of the Angry Asian Man, the assumption was made because “People fell back on stereotypes.”

He pointed out that, “There are stereotypes of Asian women as servile, as passive, as fulfilling some kind of service role.”

He didn’t make the error when he first saw the video.

“This is the single best video in the history of white men talking about Korea,” he earlier tweeted.  It was the comments on his tweet that told noticed how many people assumed the woman was the nanny.

“That hadn’t occurred to me,” he said. “It was so clearly the terrified parents.”

Many Twitter users suggest that maybe it is time for people to revisit their biases.

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