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She’s got more than 277-thousand subscribers to her Korea Grandma YouTube page and literally MILLIONS of views of her videos that range from putting on makeup to dancing and using a Polaroid camera.

Park Makrye is a 70-year old grandmother who is not afraid to show off her wrinkles in a social media world that worships perfection and the “latest trends.”  Young people from South Korea find her so adorable that some large companies like Samsung Electronics are banking on it.

Her granddaughter encouraged her to start making videos as a way to stave off dementia after the family was told she has a  high risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease like her three elder sisters did.

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Since then she’s posed for a women’s monthly magazine spread, hosted a home shopping show for retail giant Lotte and will soon be appearing as a model in a YouTube commercial for Samsung TV’s.

 

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Now you think this new found popularity and celebrity lifestyle might change Makrye but it hasn’t. Her family was relatively well off, but her husband ran up debts and abandoned her and their three young children. Since then she had to wake up every morning at four to run a restaurant, returning after nine at night. She repaid the debts and raised the kids on her own at a time when many single mothers were forced to put their babies up for adoption and received little to no government assistance.

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All three children finished high school, and Kim, her granddaughter, was the first in the family to attend college. Asked how long she would run her diner, Park replies in a second. “Until I die.”

 

Click HERE to go to Park’s Korea Grandma YouTube page

 

Filed under: Korea Grandma, lifestyle, youtube