Years before KPop Demon Hunters had wide swaths of America singing in Korean, one mainstream cartoon had a show were characters would speak almost totally in Korean. Adventure Time‘s Lady Rainicorn had the vast majority of her lines in Korean! I never watched Adventure Time as it first came out in 2010, years past the time when my kids would watch cartoons a lot. Looking at the clip above, I wish I did!
The voice actor who does Lady Rainicorn has an interesting story, as she relates (4:59) in the video below. Niki Yang was originally a storyboard artist on the show. As she was fluent in Korean, they decided to give a character lines in Korean. What ended up being really funny is that they never subtitle Lady Rainicorn’s lines! Her Korean is often very blunt and adult.
Korean was chosen for the show as in 2010, it would seem very alien to American viewers. How times have changed! To see a translation of Lady Rainicorn’s best quotes, look here. Adventure Time streams on Hulu, Disny+, and HBO Max.
(picture credit: Fred Seibert by CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
