Korea-raised Congolese celebrity Jonathan confronts racial stereotypes through YouTube channel

Entertainer and YouTuber Jonathan jokes about an online meme in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel this year. Captured from Jonathan's YouTube channel

Four Black men stand at a crosswalk in Seoul around midnight. When the light turns green, they move across the street in a tight, slightly hunched group.

“Oh, I’m glad we’re holding Starbucks,” one of them jokes. "We don't look dangerous now, do we?"

The other three burst out laughing. Then one whips around toward the camera. “I saw you put gangster music over the last video when we were walking. Is that what we look like to you?”

The scene from a YouTube video is a sort of content rarely seen in Korea. Race is not a subject that often enters casual public conversation, and humor built around skin color is rarer still.

It might also help explain that the person behind the video is Jonathan Thona Yiombi, the Congolese-born television personality better known simply as Jonathan, because he may be one of the few people who can get away with making such jokes.

He and his family settled in Korea when he was 8, and he spent the rest of his childhood in Gwangju, attending school there from elementary through high school. He first came to public attention through the KBS documentary series “Screening Humanity.” In 2024, he joined Black Paper, the content production company founded by comedian Yoo Byung-jae and his manager.

Since then, Jonathan has gone on to develop his own style of content through his YouTube channel, which surpassed 1 million subscribers last year. Among his most popular material are jokes built around race, with Jonathan slyly playing with his own Black identity and the stereotypes attached to it.

Turning taboos and prejudice into punchlines

Koreans turned out to love Jonathan’s jokes, especially those in which he uses his background to put someone else at risk of getting canceled. For instance, when someone introduces him by saying, “This guy has a bright personality,” Jonathan might tilt his head and ask, “What? Did you think I’d be dark?”

Appearing on another YouTube channel last month, Jonathan explained why he developed this particular brand of humor. During high school, his friends were so cautious around him that they avoided using the word “black,” fearing it might offend him.

“It made me uncomfortable, so I started using the word first, turning it into a joke to lighten the mood,” he said.

A list of videos from Jonathan’s “Blacks” and “Human Dark” series, in which he appears with Black friends and acquaintances to humorously portray their everyday lives. Captured from his YouTube channel

Indeed, using his identity to make jokes has become the identity of his channel, as Jonathan appears alongside other Black people who were born in Korea or have lived here for much of their lives. Together, they go to karaoke, eat trending pastries and play Korean childhood games.

But watching the videos, one soon realize there is more than just jesting over their skin colors.

The participants wave toward the camera after joking that they are difficult to see while filming at night, adding that the darkness would work to their advantage if they were thieves. Captured from Jonathan's YouTube channel

They toss around jokes such as, “Whoa, we’re practically invisible on camera at night,” and, “We should play the thieves. Hiding in the dark works to our advantage,” while playing cops and robbers.

Declaring that they are about to find out whether they truly have “Black souls,” they head to a karaoke room and belt out their favorite songs. The songs include: IU’s “Through the Night,” Kim Hyun-sik’s “My Love by My Side” and Crush’s “Nappa.”

Jonathan sings Kim Hyun-sik’s “My Love by My Side” at a karaoke room after setting out to test whether he truly has a “Black soul.” Captured from Jonathan's YouTube channel

Looking at the comments, viewers are seen caught off guard.

“Am I just watching four Korean men drinking and singing in Itaewon?” one user wrote. Another commented as if arriving at a realization: “Culture is all that matters, not race.”

The reactions echoed exactly what Jonathan had felt when he first met Black people born in Korea, and why he decided to make the videos.

“I thought my Korean was perfect, but after talking to Black friends born in Korea, I realized they were on another level,” he said in an earlier appearance on MBC's "Radio Star" this month.

“What really got me was how they kept going, ‘Ah…,’ ‘Oh…’ and ‘Yes…,’ while constantly dipping their heads. I thought, ‘These little reactions must just be ingrained in Koreans.’ I found it hilarious that my friends were doing exactly the same things.”

The videos were born from that realization, drawing laughs from the jarring mismatch between Black people instinctively perceived as foreigners and outsiders and the thoroughly Korean way they speak and behave, sometimes more so than many Koreans one might pass on the street.

The content works as humor because it touches on Korean society’s traditional perceptions of race and abruptly departs from those widely held expectations, according to Park So-jung, a professor in Hanyang University’s Department of Culture and Contents.

“The videos raise questions such as, 'Who counts as Korean?’ and ‘What does it mean to be Korean? In doing so, they create cracks in the long-held belief that Korea is an ethnically homogeneous nation.”

Life in Korea, told by those raised here

According to the Ministry of Data and Statistics, some 2.7 million people with a migrant background were living in Korea as of November 2024, accounting for approximately 5.2 percent of the total population. That means 1 in every 20 people in Korea is either a foreign national, a naturalized Korean or the child of an immigrant, making them a firmly established part of Korean society.

Jonathan’s videos reflect that reality. He comes across as an insider to Korean society, living his life as a Korean while matter-of-factly presenting the awkward moments he occasionally encounters. His content stands in stark contrast to earlier entertainment shows, where foreigners appeared mainly as guests reacting to Korean culture, or grim social documentaries depicting the struggles immigrant workers face after arriving in Korea.

When Jonathan and his friends speak passionately, it is about school or having a crush on someone, experiences shared by young people everywhere. Their conversations about fashion, beauty standards and hairstyles from a Black perspective come as an intriguing bonus.

Jonathan greets children arriving at an elementary school he visits for Children’s Day. Captured from Jonathan's YouTube channel

That does not mean the videos turn a blind eye to the awkward and uncomfortable moments Black people face in everyday life, however. Instead, they are simply presented matter-of-factly, without being dramatized.

Jonathan, for instance, says in one video that he developed a "kindergarten phobia" after finding himself in situations where a young child would innocently ask, "Why is your face so black?" only for the child's parents to become even more flustered than he was.

Another guest immediately offers his own way of handling such moments.

“When that happens, I just give them a high-five and say hi,” he says. “Then I tell them I’m Black because my mom and dad are Black.”

Jonathan answers children’s questions about his skin color, explaining that darker skin helps protect the body from sunlight. Captured from his YouTube channel

“Deeds, not words” is a principle Jonathan appears to heed when he visits an elementary school on Children’s Day to confront his anxiety. He plays with the children and responds to their innocent questions.

“There is no water in Africa,” one child says, which Jonathan calmly corrects. “Well, some areas are indeed dry, but there are other parts with plenty of water.” When asked about his skin color, Jonathan explains that dark skin helps protect people from the sun. The video ends with the children lining up to ask him for an autograph.

Such content bluntly dealing with race is rarely seen before in Korea. And Park says it could have a positive influence. Until now, Korean society has paid too little attention to how race is experienced in everyday life, holding on to the belief that the country is ethnically homogeneous even as it has steadily grown into a more multicultural society.

“Unlike societies that have experienced racial conflict and consequently developed taboos around the subject, Korean society developed a culture of silence around race largely because it lacked the social discourse and imagination to discuss it,” Park said.

“But Jonathan is putting race on the table and bringing it into everyday conversation. That in itself is significant.”

Race jokes that walk the line between humor and offense

Admittedly, there are concerns. Park said many of Jonathan’s race-based jokes are self-deprecating, raising the risk that they could further entrench stereotypes about Black people and other people of color.

Even those who make such jokes say there are moments when they feel uncomfortable, particularly when the jokes are directed at them suddenly and without context.

“When we make racial jokes as if we are trying to get each other canceled, there is a mutual understanding that it is okay to cross the line because I am going to come back at you with something similar,” Jonathan said during an appearance on another YouTube channel.

“But then there are random people who just come up to us and say, ‘I guess I wouldn’t be able to see you if the lights were turned off,’ and laugh.”

His sister, Patricia, agreed. “That is actually why I don’t like making those kinds of jokes.”

The cast gathers at Jonathan’s home to prepare Lunar New Year dishes, sharing conversations about personality types, dating, first impressions and the nagging questions commonly heard during the holiday. Captured from Jonathan's YouTube channel

On what is needed for race-based humor to move in a positive direction, Park said authenticity rooted in lived experience carries force of its own.

“Being directly affected is not an absolute requirement, but it is an important condition,” she said. “And the humor can have a more positive effect when it contains a critical perspective rather than stopping at simple amusement.”

She added, however, that in an environment where racial sensitivity remains limited, such humor can instead be received as offensive or consumed merely for laughs.

“Only when social awareness grows alongside it can we expect humor to prompt reflection as well as laughter,” she said.

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.