Mira (YouTuber)

Yim Ka-yin (born 7 October 1992), known professionally as Mira, is a Hong Kong YouTuber and businesswoman.

She makes videos about her life in South Korea.

Mira was born on 7 October 1992 in Hong Kong.

She recalled that when she was six or seven years old, her mother went out to buy food and was able to purchase only a small box of char siu rice.

Looking back on that incident, she reflected that her family's finances during her youth were in a challenging state.

While living in Hong Kong, she self-studied the Korean language for three months before moving to South Korea, where she studied at Sogang University's language school for half a year in 2014.

Her interest in learning the Korean language was inspired by encounters with South Korean customers while she was working in Hong Kong.

She learned the language out of personal interest and did not have any plans about what to do with that knowledge.

After spending three months self-studying Korean in Hong Kong, Mira moved in 2015 to South Korea, where she took classes at Sogang University's language school.

In 2016, she started a YouTube channel called "Mira's Garden", where she covered life in South Korea, South Korean culture, and her travels.

At the beginning of 2021, she founded Mongcow, an e-commerce business where she sold Mira-curated South Korean products and Mira-branded products.

In November 2021, Mira started Hong Kong Fusion, a Hong Kong-style restaurant in Seoul.

That year, her YouTube channel was the seventh most-subscribed Hong Kong YouTube channel with 730,000 subscribers.

After finishing her studies at Sogang University, she returned to Hong Kong for a year before going back to live in South Korea in 2016.

Mira started a YouTube channel in June 2016.

In a rush to create the YouTube channel, she chose the name "Mira's Garden" because she wanted to create a space that was her own.

A previous channel she considered was "Mira's Secret".

Mira said that a downside in her choice of channel name was that including an apostrophe made it harder to search for.

She observed other people use their first name and surname as their YouTube channels.

Despite harbouring regret over her choice of channel name, Mira decided to keep it unchanged owing to the long time she had used it.

At its inception, the channel covered her life in South Korea before discussing her travels to other places in the region.

She covered food and South Korean culture in her videos.

Video topics include how to become acquaintances with a Korean "oppa" and reasons a person should not date Korean men.

In 2017, she visited a juice store in Jiufen in Taiwan, to purchase red guava juice.

To test the theory that Taiwanese clerks could understand and speak Korean to be able to interact with tourists, she spoke Korean to the clerk, who responded back in Korean.

In 2021, Mira visited the shantytown Guryong Village, which is near the affluent Gangnam District, and interviewed inhabitants to show how poverty-stricken and wealthy South Koreans live.

At the end of 2021, Mira's Garden with 730,000 subscribers was the seventh most-subscribed Hong Kong YouTube channel.

One year into running the channel, she was making a monthly income of US$2,500.

Her travel videos make her the most money.

Mira signed a contract with a company to help her manage sponsorships.

For a channel with 200,000 subscribers, she said in 2022 that a YouTuber could make HK$50000 (US$0) from an advertisement.

Beginning in 2017, Mira was asked by the Korea Tourism Organization to be a spokeswoman for Michelin starred restaurants in South Korea.

Filming herself eating at numerous restaurants, she made videos featuring herself eating gejang and Hanwoo.

By 2018, she had become fluent in Korean.

She accrued over 500,000 subscribers by 2018.

The publication Gotrip attributed her channel's fast growth to her uploading one video a day seven days a week at 10:00pm.

Mira's consistent uploads gave viewers the impression that she is a friend who is talking to them every day about life, Gotrip said.

She adds both Chinese and Korean subtitles for her videos, allowing South Korean viewers to understand videos in which she speaks Chinese.

She hired a film editor to add Chinese subtitles and music, while she adds the Korean subtitles herself.

Mira calls her viewers "little bees".