It's been a year since the BBC interviewed Professor Robert Kelly of Pusan University on the impeachment of the South Korean president. His political reporting was totally overwhelmed by the grand entrance of his swaggering four-year-old daughter Marion followed by his baby son James in a walker. Then his freaked-out wife Jung-a Kim, who didn't have time to pull her pants up, made a perfectly-timed Cosmo Kramer slide into the room to to corral them both. The charming video went globally viral, and Kelly became the meme called BBC Dad. On the anniversary of the interview, Kelly gives us his thoughts on the fallout of his internet celebrity.
It is quite a curious sensation to be a quasi-celebrity, especially when you haven’t really done anything to earn it. People often ask me if it is fun or cool to be famous, and I suppose it might be more so if my fame was based on something meritorious.
As it is, we are famous simply because our children are cute and precocious, which is pretty much how everyone’s kids are. But whatever the reason, my wife now tells me I cannot go outside wearing grungy clothes because someone will recognise me. A loss for me but a gain for civilisation, I suppose.
The viral video has boosted Kelly's career somewhat, as more organizations reach out for his political perspective and more people follow his blog and Twitter account for news from Korea. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: @deathtodickens)