'BBC Dad' shares photo of his 'very grown up' kids nine years after they crashed his interview in viral moment

If you cast your minds back to 2017, you may remember things like Donald Trump being sworn into office and Prince Harry's engagement to Meghan Markle – but there's another key moment you may have forgotten about.

That year, Professor Robert Kelly gave an interview on the BBC from his home as he shared his thoughts on the political crisis in South Korea at the time.

However, viewers (and Robert himself) ended up being a little distracted when two small people crashed his interview – those being his young children.

First his daughter Marion, then four, marched into the room gleefully. As the BBC reporter in the studio told him about the adorable intruder, Robert stayed locked into the interview and tried to push Marion away while still looking at the camera.

But the chaos didn't stop there. Then his son, James, who was just a few months old at the time, came into the room in his walker.

Next thing you know and Robert's wife Jung-a Kim came crashing into the room to grab the kids so he could continue his interview.

Of course, the interview snippet went on to go viral. To date, the clip has generated 65 million views on the BBC's YouTube channel.

With his unexpected stardom in mind, Robert has given updates on his kids over the years and in a recent one shared snaps of Marion, now 13, and James, 10.

"Some BBC Dad content," Robert penned on Twitter alongside some photos. "It's been awhile: My birthday; James and I hiking; Marion looking very grown-up; BBC Mom and I at a street festival."

Robert told the Guardian at the time of the interview that both he and Jung-a thought the mishap 'was the end of my career as a talking head', adding: "I thought I’d blown it in front of the whole world."

Thankfully, he couldn't have been more wrong. While this latest X post was only shared yesterday (September 29), it's already garnered almost 10 million views.

Somebody commented: "Incredible how time flies. The babies are now teenagers!"

"I still religiously watch the interview when Marion comes strutting in," said a second, adding: "Truly iconic. Can’t believe they’re all grown up!"

Another penned: "Your family is beautiful! Everyone loved that video so much, it was so perfectly comedic and relatable."

"You should recreate a TikTok video of that time... And definitely BBC have to be in it," suggested another.

Agreeing, another Twitter user penned: "One of these days your family needs to recreate the scene. You’ll blow up Twitter again."

Robert's family returned for a second BBC interview in 2020 to discuss Covid-19 measures in South Korea, and once again his kids struggled to sit still to the delight of viewers.

Back in 2018, Robert penned an essay for the Lowry Institute about accidentally becoming an internet celebrity.

"On 11 March 2017 I was interviewed at home on the BBC’s World News program about the impeachment of South Korean president Park Geun-hye," he wrote.

"My two young children broke into my home office while I was live on air. My wife then careened into the office to pull them out. It was all captured live on global satellite TV, and the video of the blooper quickly went viral. I acquired a new moniker, one I will likely carry with me for the rest of my life: 'BBC Dad.'"

After the video went viral, he said he was regularly stopped and asked for photographs while out and about.

"A cop in South Korea once pulled me over to ask for a selfie," he added. "It is quite a curious sensation to be a quasi-celebrity, especially when you haven’t really done anything to earn it."

He also remembered watching as onlookers 'tried to read some kind of race-gender narrative into the video', seeing it as 'some sort of metaphor for white-male social power in Asia' and incorrectly identifying his wife as his nanny.

"My wife and I were not really put out by any of this, but there was enough of it that we felt compelled to address the subject. We personally see no ideological content in the video."

Robert continued to clarify that the viral moment was not staged and that it was just a 'legitimate family blooper'.