"I’m Not a Lawyer Anymore"… Lawyer Han Moon-cheol Reveals YouTube Earnings

"Just once over 100 million won... Now 10 million won"
"YouTube doesn't pay... My Blackbox Library"

Attorney Han Moon-chul, who has become well-known as a traffic accident specialist lawyer, spoke out about his YouTube earnings.

On July 12, Han appeared on the premiere episode of MBC's "Move the Heart: Lecturers" (hereafter referred to as "Lecturers"). "Lecturers" is a program where prominent figures from various fields in Korea—Oh Eun-young, Kim Sung-keun, Han Moon-chul, Monk Geumgang, Seol Min-seok, Park Myung-soo, and Kim Young-mi—compete in weekly lecture contests. Han was the first lecturer in the first episode.

Attorney Han Moon-chul. [Photo by Asia Economy DB]

During his lecture, Han was asked, "Is it true that your YouTube revenue reached 10 billion won?" He replied, "Is it only 10 billion won?" and then clarified, "That figure is exaggerated. The actual amount is about one-tenth of that."

Having started his YouTube channel in 2018, Han said, "There was only one month in 2020 when my monthly YouTube earnings exceeded 100 million won," adding, "That was when I had just over 500,000 subscribers. I truly worked like crazy then." He currently has about 1.78 million subscribers.

He continued, "At that time, I said, 'I'm not going to practice law anymore. Why bother being a lawyer?' But you never know what might happen. The following month, the 100 million won dropped sharply to 50 million won, and now it's 10 million won. Sometimes, it's even less than 10 million won."

He added, "The YouTube channel itself doesn't actually make much money," explaining, "But YouTube serves as my black box library," referring to the reason he continues his channel.

Han recalled that, after starting his legal career, he spent two to three years handling criminal cases involving theft, pickpocketing, organized crime, fraud, and gambling, and said that money came in easily during that time.

However, at some point, he began to feel skeptical and shared that he eventually stopped taking criminal cases because he felt like he was collecting money that pickpockets had earned.

Later, after writing a book about traffic accidents during his military service as a judge advocate, Han became a legal advisor for a bus company. He reflected, "Although my income was lower than when I took on criminal cases, I felt much more at ease."

He explained, "Because I kept winning lawsuits on behalf of the bus company, I ended up receiving success fees by reducing the compensation that victims and families who lost loved ones in accidents were supposed to receive. I realized I couldn't continue like that, so I decided to represent the victims instead and have since handled more than 6,000 traffic accident cases."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.