Hororororo Grandma

Origin

"Hororollo" comes from a news report aired by the Korean cable news channel YTN on May 19th, 2006. At the time, swarms of mayflies were descending nightly on the area around Amsa Station on Seoul Subway Line 8, and a YTN crew interviewed Yun Sun-ja, an elderly woman who had run a street stall in front of the station for decades.

Describing how bad the infestation was, she said the insects "swarm in like a hive of bees the moment the sun goes down, because it's so brightly lit here." What made the clip famous came next. Trying to convey tens of thousands of mayflies lifting off at once and finding no word for it, she waved her hand upward and produced the nonsense mimetic sound "ho-ro-ro-ro-ro-ro." It isn't a word in any dictionary, yet listeners immediately picture the swarm scattering — and the rolled delivery turns out to be surprisingly hard to imitate. Those two seconds were clipped out and began circulating online. YTN itself revisited the report on February 19th, 2020 in its "News From N Years Ago" segment, openly covering how its own broadcast became a meme.

Spread and Variations

The mid-2000s were the peak of Korea's "essential ingredient" remix culture, when personal homepages and forum boards mass-produced audio samples for mashups. Short, rhythmic clips that were funny without any context were the most prized, and "hororollo" met all three conditions. The audio was dropped into user-made videos and Flash animations as a sound effect, to the point where many people knew the sound without ever knowing what the original news story was about.

Variations mostly manipulate the audio itself: pitching it up until it sounds like birdsong, or looping it on the beat into a remix track. Because the joke lives in the sound rather than in an image or caption, it doesn't reproduce as text — citing it usually means attaching the original clip.

How It's Used

• Describing small things swarming in or scattering all at once — insects, flocks of birds
• Papering over a word you can't find with an onomatopoeic sound ("it was all going hororollo")
• Comments on summer posts about mayflies and night bugs
• As a sound effect in mashup videos, at the moment something bursts or scatters onscreen

What Became of Her

Yun Sun-ja's whereabouts were unknown for years until the YouTube channel Geunhwang Olympic published an interview with her on December 21st, 2020, fourteen years after the broadcast. She explained that after losing her husband early she had run the stall in front of Amsa Station for over thirty years to support her family, and that by then, at an advanced age, she had given up the stall and was living at her eldest daughter's home. The video also revealed that she only learned she had become internet-famous long after the fact.

Sources

• YTN, "Do You Remember the 'Hororollo Grandmother'?" (February 19th, 2020) — the 2006 original report, revisited
• Wikitree, "The legendary 'Hororollo Grandmother,' famous from one interview — where she is now" — summary of the Geunhwang Olympic appearance
• Namu Wiki, "Hororollo" — the May 19th, 2006 Amsa Station mayfly report and how the clip spread