BBC Dad comes out of digital hiding to talk about that infamous clip

"This is my life, man."
 By 
Marissa Wenzke
 on 

Finally, a full four days after the video went absolutely everywhere, we know what was going on inside the mind of Korea expert Robert Kelly when his children decided to crash his BBC interview.

Behind all the nervous eye shutting and slight grimaces was "a mixture of surprise, embarrassment and amusement and love and affection," Kelly says in a new video interview -- with his kids -- for the Wall Street Journal.

In the clip, Kelly and wife Kim Jung-A speak out about that adorably hilarious interview fiasco, which even he now admits was "terribly cute."

This time, though, he's less stone-faced academic and more down-to-earth parent. His child paws at his face and tugs his hair in the newest interview, and he even shows off some cozy dad slippers toward the end. His bed full of books has also been cleared away.

Kim Jung-A, meanwhile, talks about what was going through her own mind as the whole thing unfolded. First off, she rightfully points the finger right at Kelly: "Yeah, most of the time he locks the door," she says before he bursts into laughter. "I heard she leaving but I couldn't find them around me and I tried to check the door," Jung-A explains. "It was some chaos for me."

“She was in a hippity-hoppity mood that day because of the school party.”

The incident began when the couple’s 4-year-old daughter Marion first noticed her father on the television screen in another room. She jumped up and down upon seeing his face on the screen, and before long, she was waltzing into his home office and overshadowing his discussion of South Korean politics.

It was her birthday, as Kelly explains, so it’s no wonder about all the dancing. “She was in a hippity-hoppity mood that day because of the school party,” he said.

Soon after, 8-month-old James trailed in behind his sister, wobbling around in a baby-walker. As all this was happening, Kim Jung-A was still calmly watching her husband’s interview on a television screen in another room. A time delay meant she saw that epic dancing entrance just a little too late.

When he realized baby James was making his way around the room too, Kelly felt all out of options. “Then I knew it was over,” Kelly said. Kim Jung-A eventually rushed in, scrambling to assemble the children and whisk them away.

At one point in the new video interview, a child can be heard screaming in the background and Kelly says to the interviewer, "This is my life, man."

In the wake of that epic video, the couple has turned off their Facebook and Twitter alerts, he says. "And I'm not even going near YouTube or Reddit or whatever these other sites are."

Still, as they shy away from the spotlight and hope the whole thing fades away, Kelly says the video has actually left the couple with a lot of good vibes.

"An overwhelming [amount of comments] that have been sent to us has been positive," Kelly says. "Mostly we're interested in [it] fading to a manageable level."

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Marissa Wenzke

Marissa is a real-time news intern at the LA office. She has a bachelor's degree in political science from UC Santa Barbara and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. She's a free spirit.

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