Riya Choudhary, Delhi

Different cultures, one love! Meet Jin Hyun Lim and Jung Inwook, better known as JinJung Brothers, budding content creators who have taken the internet by storm, creating engaging, relatable, and hilarious content in Hindi. They were born in Korea and raised in India. Driven by their love for India and its culture, they decided to embark on a creative journey, sharing their perspective in Hindi. In this interview, we delve deeper into their journey, explore their motivations, and discover the unbreakable bond of Indo-Korean culture through their lens.

How do you maintain a connection with your home country while also embracing your life in India & South Korea?

The concept of “home” or “home country” is quite a strange one for both of us. Although we were born in Korea which makes Korea our home country, we were raised in India which makes India our home. So, in a way, we are very lucky to have two countries that we can proudly call our homes. The strange thing about having two countries as homes is when you are in one, you start missing the other and vice versa. What we normally do is when we start missing the other country, we will have that country’s food because there is nothing better than food that takes you back home. For example, when we are in Korea, we will have Indian food either at a restaurant or even make it at home sometimes preferably with some Bollywood music in the background. 

Your Instagram account, jinjung.brothers, has recently crossed 54.4K followers. What motivated you to start this account, and what kind of content do you focus on?

Living in Korea for the past few years, we started missing India. So, we asked ourselves what we can do to overcome this longing we have. That’s when we came up with the idea to make content where we can showcase our memories from growing up in India. That way we can be in India virtually through our memories even when we are physically in Korea. That’s why if you watch our videos, most of them are based on the true experiences that we actually went through! 

Thankfully upon watching our videos a lot of people found them relatable and we got positive feedback that our videos bring them lots of joy and happiness. We find great meaning in making someone’s day better and hearing such feedback really motivated us to keep going. So, these days our content is not solely focused on sharing our memories from growing up in India, which we do of course time to time, but we are also dedicating a lot of our energy to creating content that can bring more joy and laughter into people’s lives. We want our page to become a place where people can come and have a good laugh when they are having a bad day or make their day even better if they are already having a good one.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jin Hyun Lim & Jung Inwook (@jinjung.brothers)

We are beyond happy to see your cross-cultural love towards India. Please share how you started exploring and admiring India. Are there any memorable experiences while exploring Indian culture?

We both moved to India when we were really young so it’s hard to say that there is a single incident or experience that sparked our love and admiration for India. We spent most of our childhood in India and grew up with its culture so naturally, India became our home. The love that we have for India is comparable to the love Indians have for their own country because we consider India our home. 

In your journey as a content creator, what do you find most rewarding about the widespread recognition you’ve received in India? Were you prepared for the overwhelming love and support you’ve garnered since you started?

It’s very flattering to hear that we have an outburst of acknowledgement in India, but we don’t think we are there yet. We will keep striving to expand our page and we are very grateful for every single person that has been part of our journey. When we first started our page, we didn’t expect to receive this much amount of love and support. It is now our job to return all the love and support we got through making more amazing content!

Learning another language seems easy but it’s actually challenging. Being a Korean, how challenging it was for you to learn Hindi as you stayed here in India, especially Hyderabad where Telugu is also spoken the most. How did you feel when you faced communication problems and how did you overcome it?

Learning a new language can be quite challenging. Fortunately, moving to India at a very young age and spending my childhood in India, I was able to learn it almost as effortlessly as my mother tongue. Despite encountering difficulties while attempting to grasp multiple languages simultaneously, I eventually found it easier than someone learning a new language as an adult.

However, since Korean is my mother tongue and I feel most comfortable with it, my proficiency in Hindi wasn’t initially fluent. So, to improve, I watched numerous movies and TV series to improve my listening skills and sound more native. I am still working on it!

Talking more about India, we can see that you have given yourself Indian names – Ramesh and Suresh. Please share the backstory behind coming up with these names.

We were actually working at an Indian restaurant for some time in Korea and we quickly became friends with the Indian chefs working there. They had difficulty pronouncing our Korean names, so we decided to give ourselves Indian names to make their job easier. Since then, we have been stuck with the names. We thought Ramesh and Suresh would be great names because first of all they rhyme, and we are a team. Also, what names can be more Indian than Ramesh and Suresh!?

During your time in India, what aspects of Indian society, such as food, festivals, or social customs, stand out to you as being unique, significant, or complex?

One of the aspects that really stood out to us when we were in India, which we believe is one of India’s biggest strengths, is how diverse India is. Unlike Korea, which is a very homogenous country, India is home to numerous ethnicities, languages, and religions. And that diversity gives birth to countless social customs and practices, traditions and cultures, and even food. For instance, south India is completely different from north India and even in north India itself, each state is like its own country. We believe it’s that diversity that India possesses that gives India a unique standpoint in this world and what makes India “rich.”

Going further, what amazes us about India and its diversity is that we believe India is one of the few countries that has learned to live in harmony despite its vast differences. Of course, there have been issues and every now and then new issues arise but no one country is perfect. Generally speaking, from what we have experienced, Indians are very respectful and accepting towards each other’s differences and we believe that is something we should all learn to do. 

In what ways have you noticed cultural differences between South Korea and India during your time here? How do these differences influence your day-to-day experiences?

Having spent more time in India, we got quite used to its culture. When we returned to Korea to live and work, the biggest change we noticed was the “palli palli” culture, which is like the Korean version of “jaldi jaldi” — everything happens so fast! Koreans tend to lead very busy lives, which means they do things quickly. We missed the more laid-back and relaxed vibe we experienced in India.

We also observed differences in how people interacted. In India, there’s a more open and casual approach to socializing, even with strangers. That’s not to say Koreans don’t socialize, but we found the atmosphere in India to be a bit more relaxed and easygoing in that regard.

We really loved watching your content with Charlie (40Kahani). Tell us about your friendship with Charlie. How do you get to know each other?

I can’t remember the precise year we met, but I believe it was in 2012 when I first met Charlie Bhai in Mussoorie, introduced by a mutual family friend. Before meeting Charlie bhai, I assumed I was the only Korean proficient in Hindi par Charlie bhai ki Hindi sunke ek dam shock ho gya tha😂

Despite nearly a decade passing since our first meeting, we stayed in touch and engaged in wonderful conversations. Charlie Bhai has been a significant inspiration for embarking on this new journey, and for that, I am immensely grateful🙏

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jin Hyun Lim & Jung Inwook (@jinjung.brothers)

What was your inspiration to start making Desi content?

As we briefly mentioned in one of the previous questions, we were both raised in India and after coming back to Korea, we started missing India. And we thought by making content based on our memories from India, we would be able to live through our memories from India again and somehow overcome the longing we have for India.

One of the biggest advantages of making Desi content for us is we can connect with people from back home and as funny as it may sound, although we are based in Korea right now, it sometimes feels like we are living in India! And we love that! 

Are there any content creators you would like to work with in the future?   

We would love to shoot a video with Dolly Bhai! We think he has developed a great character for himself, and we think he will be a very interesting person to work with. But besides all that, we would love to try his chai. It is nice and karak!!

Could you share your plans and aspirations? Are there any specific goals you want to achieve in the future?

As of now, we don’t have a specific goal for the future when it comes to our social media. We love making content and we find great joy in bringing smiles to people’s faces through our videos. One of the missions we both carried at one point in our lives was “a single smile can save a person’s life so let’s try our best to make at least one person smile every day”. We are now practicing that digitally by making content.

We know that life can be tough sometimes, but we also know that life is beautiful. We want to continue spreading love and positivity so that more and more people can focus on the brighter side of life rather than the dark. If we can do that, we will consider ourselves the most successful content creators in the world.

Based on your personal experience in India, what guidance would you offer to those considering to relocate to a different country and finding themselves in a new cultural environment?

We think the most important thing when moving to a foreign country is to stay open-minded – get rid of whatever expectations you might have and just simply be ready to embrace and indulge. When you move to a foreign country with a set of expectations, what happens is first of all it’s very rare for all your expectations to be met and once your expectations are not met, out of frustration, you start focusing on the negative aspects of the country and its people, further worsening your experience. You will start asking yourself questions like “Why is it like this? What is it like that?”, which will not help you at all. What we always tell people that are moving to a new country is to go with the mindset of a newborn baby. When you don’t have expectations, everything is fun and exciting. When you find everything fun and exciting, you project positive energy. And when your energy becomes better, other people will notice you and they will want to become friends with you.

We think it’s very important to make good friends especially when you move to a new place because at the end of the day, it’s not the place that makes your experience better. It’s the people. If you want to make good friends, you first have to become the person that other people will want to be friends with, and one of the ways of achieving that especially when moving to a new country is to stay open-minded. Good luck to you all who are embarking on a new journey! 

Amidst your rising popularity in India, do you have any special messages you’d like to convey to your Hindi-speaking viewers and fans?

First of all, thank you to all the fans! Hum honestly itna pyaar aur support expect nahi kar rahe the India se itne saare logon se. Hum sabko itna saara support ke liye dhanyavaad kehna chahte hain aur hum yeh pakka karenge ki hum sabko hamesha muskurata rahenge!

We would like to thank Jin Hyun Lim & Jung Inwook for taking out their precious time for this interview. Wishing them the very best in all his future endeavours. We hope you all loved reading this interview as much as we loved conducting it. Let us know your thoughts in the comments!