A Youtuber apologized after getting criticized for ‘mocking autistic people’ as she copied Woo Young-woo’s behaviors

A female Youtuber is being criticized for impersonating the character Woo Young-woo in “Extraordinary Attorney Woo”.

Misunjjang, a Youtuber with 230,000 subscribers, posted a ‘Shorts’ video on her Youtube channel on July 18th. As soon as her upload, netizens poured out criticism, pointing out the Youtuber’s action as ‘mocking autistic people’.

The video title was “My friend… Aren’t you too immersed in Woo Young-woo?”.

In the released video, Youtuber Misunjjang copied the actions of Woo Young-woo (Park Eun-bin), the main character in ENA’s Wednesday-Thursday drama “Extraordinary Attorney Woo”. She claimed that what she did were behaviors of people who were too immersed in the drama.

Youtuber Misunjjang did four behaviors, including “Open your eyes as wide as possible”, “Wear the headset that you didn’t even use”, “Suddenly become interested in whales”, and “Eat kimbap vertically”. The video spread rapidly, drawing huge attention from Internet users on Youtube and online communities. 

In response to the video, netizens criticized Misunjjang, saying she was making fun of autistic people. The Youtuber later posted an apology explaining the whole story.

She said, “In this video, I didn’t do any ridiculous action, I didn’t disparage people with autism and I didn’t mockingly claim that all autistic people were like that.”

She continued, “It’s just a video I made to say that the character Woo Young-woo in ‘Extraordinary Attorney Woo’ is cute and attractive so many people around me are following what she does in the drama”.

Lastly, she said, “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable. I wrote ‘Woo Young-woo disease’ because I thought it was a trend in which people imitate specific famous figures like ‘IU disease’ or ‘Chuu disease’. I was definitely wrong as I didn’t think carefully about this part. I’m so sorry”. 

Source: wikitree