[jliechti1]

大山 (Dashan), or Mark Roswell, a Canadian, is the Chinese equivalent. He's a TV personality in China and is known for his perfect Chinese and his ability to do certain comedic styles, that are difficult even for native Chinese speakers to do (a loose western equivalent might be something like Abbott & Costello Who's On First? - very rapid dialogues).

Like David Spector, he is known nearly everywhere in China and has been on TV for decades. Also, most Westerners have never heard of him. Does any know any equivalents like this in South Korea or any other Asian countries?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashan

[bane]

South Korea has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Hammington

Not as popular as Dashan, but he's reasonably well known.

[w1ntermute]

There's a relatively new debate show on South Korean cable featuring a whole cast of foreigners who are surprisingly fluent in Korean. Most of them are just gaining popularity now, but some of them have been showing up on TV for a while.

Overview: http://korcan50years.com/2014/08/18/korea-newest-talkshow-th...

Episodes with English subs: http://bxrme.tumblr.com/post/92235653533/abnormal-summit-sub...

[sho_hn]

You beat me to it - when I saw the HN headline I immediately went "I should post about Abnormal Summit" :).

Let me add some interesting trivia instead, perhaps: There was another Korean talk show featuring foreign guests some years ago, Global Talk Show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Talk_Show). It featured all-female guests (Abnormal Summit has an all-male cast so far). It was a more gaudy affair though and centered on the guests' experiences in South Korea. Abnormal Summit has a much more interesting hook, the focus is on exchanging opinions between citizens of different nations.

Beyond TV: I'd argue that Simon and Martina from Eat Your Kimchi (http://www.eatyourkimchi.com), Canadian YouTubers living in South Korea, are well known among the country's youth.

> [...] who are surprisingly fluent in Korean [...]

This is almost a running gag in these situations/shows by now - whenever a foreigner rolls out a few words of Korean the reaction is invariably "와 한국말 잘하시네요!~" ("wow your Korean is so good"). You can play some kind of drinking game to that :).

[seanmcdirmid]

I saw him at the wudaokou Starbucks giving an interview just before the Olympics. That guy is tall in real life. But he is not that popular anymore, most of the younger kids don't know who he is even if their parents do.