I wished he had brought his kids with him, ” said a student in the audience. This is not something one typically hears in a lecture about the state of affairs in Korea, but this was not a typical
I wished he had brought his kids with him, ” said a student in the audience. This is not something one typically hears in a lecture about the state of affairs in Korea, but this was not a typical lecturer.
The setting was a standing-room-only Leong Hall at the Ateneo de Manila University. The visiting speaker was an American named Dr. Robert E. Kelly. If you’ ve been on the internet any time since March, he may look a little familiar.
“So I’ m famous because of my kids, ” he said at the very beginning of his lecture. The students laughed. Everybody knew what he was talking about.
Kelly is an American political analyst based in Busan, South Korea, specializing in international security, with a focus on Northeast Asia, and an associate professor at the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University. He has been on TV countless times as an expert discussing Korean affairs
—but he became known worldwide for something completely unexpected.
On March 10, Kelly was on BBC World News discussing the fallout from the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. Kelly, clad in a blazer, shirt and tie, was being interviewed via Skype in his home office when the door behind him opened and his children, Marion, 4, and James, then just 8 months old, entered, distracting Kelly.
‘It’s my fault’
This was followed by the swift entrance of Kelly’s wife, Kim Jung-a, who hurriedly grabbed the kids and closed the door behind her. Kelly is obviously trying to keep from laughing while apologizing for the disruption. “It’s my fault, ” he later explained. “The home office has a door with a lock that I didn’ t push.”
The clip went viral, seen by more than a billion people now. Kelly has been dubbed the “viral BBC dad, ” and his daughter, Marion, the subject of memes, including several that tell you “how to dress like Marion Kelly.”
The sudden fame shocked Kelly. “We didn’ t leave the house for three days, ” he explained to media after his lecture. The Kellys received over 1,000 media requests, even as they exiled themselves from social media. Kelly explained that they simply didn’ t know how to deal with the media onslaught, which even had reporters tracking down Kelly’s parents back in the United States.
