How K Car's Driving Series Cast Woni Before Her Breakout

Before ‘거제 야호’ (“Geoje, yahoo!”) and before ‘LOVE ATTACK’ reached number one on Melon, RESCENE’s leader Woni was learning to drive on a used-car company’s YouTube channel. ‘나의 연수 아저씨’ (“My Driving-Lesson Uncle”) is a web series on 스튜디오ㅋㅇㅋ (@studiokok), the official channel of K Car (케이카), a KOSPI-listed used-car platform that sells the cars it buys. It is the company’s own branded content: K Car says its services are woven into the episodes. The series cast Woni as a learner driver beside comedians Lee Seon-min (이선민) and Yoo Young-woo (유영우) in August 2025, well before the ‘거제 야호’ breakout, and ran for eleven months to a graduation episode on 3 July 2026. Korean press now treats it as the precursor: Herald Business reported the channel’s Silver Button under the headline ‘K Car spotted RESCENE’s Woni first’. Here is the timeline, from the launch release to the finale, with what each source actually says.

August 2025: a used-car channel casts a rookie

스튜디오ㅋㅇㅋ was created on 11 January 2025 as a second K Car channel, and the company presented it in February as a new channel for informal car talk, separate from its main official one; its About page links to kcar.com and K Car’s official Instagram. The name is the initial consonants of 케이카, which also read as a laugh, and K Car’s release says it signalled a wish to talk about cars with humour rather than as hard information.

The driving series arrived that summer. A teaser, ‘운전 연수해주실 분?’ (“Anyone willing to give driving lessons?”), went up on 13 August 2025, and the first lesson, ‘현대차도 모르는데 운전을 어떻게 해’ (“How can I drive when I can’t even tell a Hyundai?”), on 15 August. K Car’s press release followed on 2 September, announcing a reorganisation of the channel around two new corners: ‘나의 연수 아저씨’, in which a beginner-driver host is coached by expert ‘uncles’, and ‘차주님둘 그 차 왜 삼?’, a debate between two car owners over their own cars. RESCENE’s leader Woni was named as the learner and comedians Lee Seon-min and Yoo Young-woo as the instructors, with new episodes every Friday at 8 p.m. After roughly six months the channel had passed 27,000 subscribers, 39.17 million cumulative views and 640,000 hours of watch time. K Car president Jung In-kook said in the release that the channel was settling into the role of a community for car talk, and that the autumn content was meant to widen communication with customers.

Xports News later summarised the starting position: when the series began in August 2025, RESCENE were not a group drawing attention and Woni was a rookie only beginning to be known.

December to January: a first car and two trips to Geoje

By December the learner had a car. On 12 December 2025 the channel published ‘초보운전 3개월 만에 800만원짜리 첫 차 질렀습니다’ (“Three months into driving, I bought an eight-million-won first car”). Cosmopolitan Korea, in a June 2026 round-up of idols’ cars, reported the details: the series had followed Woni from getting her licence through lessons to a used-car purchase, and the car she chose was a red Kia Ray in the fully equipped Luxury trim, bought through K Car at a used price of about 7.8 million won. The magazine added that later episodes set her drive-through, rain, night and long-distance driving challenges.

The long-distance episodes are the ones the press keeps citing. ‘초보운전이 내비 없이 왕복 8시간 거제까지 갈 수 있을까?’ (“Can a beginner drive eight hours round trip to Geoje without a navigation system?”) was published on 2 January 2026 and ‘경차로 떠난 거제 풀코스 여행’ (“A full Geoje trip in a compact car”) on 16 January; both take Woni, with Lee and Yoo, to her hometown of Geoje in South Gyeongsang Province. When Ilgan Sports looked back at the series on 4 July, it put the two Geoje episodes at 2.39 million and 1.92 million views and tied that growth to the ‘LOVE ATTACK’ reverse run that had begun in the meantime. By 26 August 2026 the watch pages showed 3,528,736 and 2,843,322 views.

February 2026: the channel a producer proposed, and a pact

Woni’s personal channel, ‘안녕하세요원이입니다잘부탁드립니다’ (“Hello, I’m Woni, nice to meet you”), was created on 4 February 2026. Xports News reports that ‘the PD in charge’ (담당PD) — the article does not say of what — had been watching the content and proposed that Woni open a channel of her own, and that she started it after deliberation with the aim of making RESCENE better known. Woni told Dong-A Ilbo that she hesitated until the day before opening. Dong-A’s summary is direct: the personal channel came about because of the driving-lesson content with Lee and Yoo. Lee appeared in its first video, and when the gyaru video began drawing reactions Yoo joined too; the three marked it with their first fine-dining meal, according to Ilgan Sports.

That February appearance produced the line the press still quotes. Lee asked Woni to strike a particular pose if she ever became the ending fairy at MAMA, as a sign she remembered him; Woni answered that she would have to win first, and told Lee he was certain to land a regular programme. Lee’s reply, as reported by Ilgan Sports, TV Report and Xports News: ‘Within five years you will be a MAMA ending fairy, and uncle will become a terrestrial main MC and invite you as a guest.’ Woni: ‘Let’s succeed.’

What followed is RESCENE’s 2026: Minami’s ‘거제, 야호~!’ greeting in the gyaru video became a meme, the channel passed 760,000 subscribers within four months of opening (Dong-A Ilbo, 9 June), and ‘LOVE ATTACK’ from August 2024 was 7th on the Melon TOP100 by 9 June and number one on 8 July. Two things should be kept apart. The Kyunghyang Shinmun, which identifies Solfa Studio as the channel’s producer and its PD Yoon Seong-won as the person who saw ‘bravery’ in Woni, attributes the success to Woni herself and the channel’s planning. The driving series is the precursor, in Ilgan Sports’ wording: ‘the driving-uncle content deserves much of the credit for the background’.

June 2026: the Silver Button, and what K Car said it got

On 10 June 2026 K Car announced that 스튜디오ㅋㅇㅋ had passed 100,000 subscribers and received YouTube’s Silver Button, which K Car said was the shortest time to the button of any channel in the used-car industry since opening in January 2025, with 140 million cumulative views across long-form and short-form uploads. Herald Business ran the news as ‘K Car spotted RESCENE’s Woni first’; Bridge Economy led with ‘the K Car YouTube channel Woni appears on’.

The release is also the plainest statement of what the series is. K Car named ‘나의 연수 아저씨’ and the car-owner debate show as the channel’s representative content, said its own services are woven into the flow of the episodes rather than presented as advertisements, and said the driving series had brought in idol fandoms and general variety viewers on top of car enthusiasts. K Car itself used the term brand content for the channel. An industry official quoted by Bridge Economy called it a case of a channel that gained popularity by exposing the brand naturally instead of putting car sales up front. President Jung In-kook said the milestone showed the company’s way of communicating with customers was broadening.

Ten days later Ilgan Sports profiled Lee Seon-min under the nickname the series gave him, ‘조수석 삼촌’ (“passenger-seat uncle”), and wrote that the K Car series had contributed greatly to the RESCENE syndrome. As the group drew attention for Minami’s ‘거제 야호’, Zena’s ‘신라 공주’ character and the ‘LOVE ATTACK’ reverse run, the series itself surged as popular content. Lee’s agency, Metacomedy, said it was a meaningful experience simply to have worked with Woni.

July 2026: the graduation episode and a seasonal format

The finale, ‘원이, 편안함에 이르렀나 l 나의연수아저씨 졸업식’ (“Woni, have you reached ease? — the graduation ceremony”), was published on 3 July 2026. Ilgan Sports’ account of it: Lee and Yoo arrived in the outfits they had worn for the first episode’s opening; over eleven months Woni had learned car basics from the two passenger-seat uncles and driven herself; and after the last recording was wrapped, the production team and the two comedians made a surprise visit to the taping of the music show where RESCENE were performing ‘LOVE ATTACK’ for the reverse run. Woni called the programme the foundation of her growth and ‘a channel I cannot forget until I die’; Lee and Yoo wrote her handwritten letters, and Lee said ‘나의 연수 아저씨’ would move to a seasonal format, leaving a return open. By 26 August the episode had 4,194,981 views.

The cast’s paths have kept crossing. On 9 August Lee posted a short clip of himself watching RESCENE perform ‘LOVE ATTACK’ at the 2026 Coupang Play Series halftime show, shouting the group’s name and tearing up at Woni’s solo shot, TV Report reported; in July he had said on his own channel that he hoped she would become a global star and that uncle was always cheering. In July he appeared on MBC’s ‘나 혼자 산다’, ‘라디오스타’ and ‘놀면 뭐하니?’, with tvN’s ‘유 퀴즈 온 더 블럭’ scheduled for 12 August. As of 26 August 2026 스튜디오ㅋㅇㅋ stands at 190,000 subscribers, 278 videos and 226,897,340 views; Woni’s own channel, created six months after the driving series began, stands at 1.89 million subscribers.

Key takeaways

• ‘나의 연수 아저씨’ is branded content: a series on 스튜디오ㅋㅇㅋ, K Car’s official YouTube channel (created 11 January 2025), into which K Car says its services are woven.
• K Car’s 2 September 2025 release named RESCENE leader Woni as the learner driver and comedians Lee Seon-min and Yoo Young-woo as the ‘uncles’, with new episodes on Fridays at 8 p.m.; the teaser went up on 13 August and the first lesson on 15 August 2025.
• Woni’s first car in the series was a red Kia Ray, Luxury trim, at about 7.8 million won used through K Car (Cosmopolitan Korea, 26 June 2026).
• The Geoje trip episodes of 2 and 16 January 2026 had 2.39 million and 1.92 million views on 4 July 2026 (Ilgan Sports) and 3,528,736 and 2,843,322 on 26 August.
• Woni’s own channel was created on 4 February 2026 after a producer proposed it (Xports names only ‘the PD in charge’; Kyunghyang separately credits Solfa Studio’s PD Yoon Seong-won); Lee appeared in its first video and made the five-year ‘MAMA ending fairy / terrestrial main MC’ pact.
• 스튜디오ㅋㅇㅋ passed 100,000 subscribers on 10 June 2026, which K Car called the fastest Silver Button in the used-car industry, with 140 million cumulative views; it had 190,000 subscribers on 26 August.
• The graduation episode of 3 July 2026 closed an eleven-month run and had 4,194,981 views by 26 August; Lee said the series would return in a seasonal format.
• Press attributes the breakout itself to Woni’s own channel, produced by Solfa Studio (Kyunghyang, Dong-A); Ilgan Sports credits the driving series as a major part of the background.