South Koreans have found an obsession other than K-Pop — White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Koreans are learning English by studying Leavitt’s daily briefings, thanks to a wildly popular YouTube channel that slices up her appearances into free bite-sized English lessons — translating her expressions and colloquialisms into their native tongue.
What drew hundreds of thousands of fans after last year’s launch was her phrasing –delivered with a smile or occasional scowl — and the methodical pace she keeps while delivering President Trump’s messages for a TV audience, say fans.
“Her pronunciation is really clear. Her attitude is also the thing – she’s very confident on what she is saying,” said Yeonju Hong, an anchor for Korea’s TV Chosun who is earning a master’s degree at Georgetown University in DC. The New Hampshire-born Leavitt’s accent “is very clear to non-native speakers,” she said.
The site, called dotdotenglish, appears on TikTok and YouTube, and pitches Leavitt’s briefings as offering “five English expressions to boost your speaking skills” through daily conversation, including “shadowing” and dictation.
One of the clips is from a March briefing and opens with Leavitt saying: “It’s great to see all of you on this very newsy day, to say the least.” The line gets played multiple times, allowing viewers to learn through repetition, while Korean language characters and voice-over translate the meaning of “to say the least.”
That clip of the otherwise uneventful briefing has been been viewed 160,000 times on YouTube, and Leavitt clips from last March-April topped 500,000 views.
“The Korean people like her,” said one US-based Korean reporter. “They say she’s Trump’s mouth.”
Leavitt’s bond with Korea began when she posted about “South Korea skincare finds” while attending the annual APEC summit with President Trump in Gyeongju in late October 2025. Her trip to a dessert shop in the South Korean city near Busan with glamorous White House aide Margo Martin got picked up in the Korean press.
Even a late appearance at the White House podium by Leavitt, 28, a Trump advisor who joined the White House staff in 2019, is a teachable moment.
“I apologize for my tardiness. It’s quite the newsy day,” she explained in another clip-turned-lesson from last year. That provided the opportunity for a definition: “Tardiness, the quality or habit of being late or delayed,” according to the video tutorial.
Viewers get to learn some of Leavitt’s favorite turns of phrase, as when she says Trump “level set” with the American people. Also, there was an instance of direct translation in Korean when Leavitt said it showed “how badly Joe Biden screwed it up” when talking about the US economy.
Even the war with Iran is a chance to boost vocabulary.
“Turning to the ongoing military operations in Iran,” Leavitt says in a lesson posted March 4. The video teaches the pronunciation and definition of the word “decimate” – what the US military is doing to Iran’s defenses.
The White House did not comment, in English or Korean.
