Na Young-seok doesn’t make television so much as he makes a guarantee. His newest show, a farm-life unscripted format that drops three A-list stars into days of actual agricultural labor, has now won its cable timeslot for two consecutive weeks since premiering on tvN — and depending on who you ask, that’s either proof the genre’s most reliable hitmaker still has the touch, or evidence that Korean variety TV is leaning harder than ever on a shrinking pool of proven names instead of new ideas.
The show, formally titled “콩 심은 데 콩 나는 가고팜 하고팜 동물농장” and shortened by everyone to “콩콩팜팜,” premiered June 19, 2026, with Lee Kwang-soo, Kim Woo-bin and Doh Kyung-soo cast as interns — branded in-show as “KKPP Food” — sent through a crash course in dairy-farm work on Jeju Island. According to Nielsen Korea data cited by Newsis reporter Nam Jung-hyun on June 20, the first episode posted a national household average rating of 3.0% (peak 3.6%) and a Seoul-metro average of 3.5% (peak 4.2%) on a paid-platform basis, putting it in first place for its timeslot among cable and general programming channels. Among viewers aged 20 to 49 — the demographic advertisers pay the most to reach — the show ranked first across every channel, including terrestrial broadcasters, in both the national and metro figures.
That wasn’t a one-week fluke. The second episode, which aired June 26, climbed to a national household peak of 3.7% and a metro peak of 4.2%, per OSEN reporter Kang Seo-jung’s June 27 report — extending the timeslot win to two straight weeks and again topping the 20-49 demographic across all channels nationally and in the capital region for a second consecutive week.
Why it’s working is no mystery: physical-comedy chemistry. Lee Kwang-soo, tasked with shoveling manure across multiple barns, complained on camera that the show should be called “똥똥팜팜” (“Poop-Poop Farm-Farm”) rather than “콩콩팜팜,” and the abrupt arrival of comedian Moon Sang-hoon as a deadpan surprise intern — who needled Kim Woo-bin and Lee Kwang-soo with lines like “stop forcing me to be comfortable, that makes it worse” — gave the show a second engine beyond the farm-chore premise. That’s the case for the optimistic read: in a content landscape oversaturated with prestige dramas and high-concept competition formats, low-stakes “stars doing manual labor” comfort television still has a hungry audience, and Na’s name recognition gets it the trial that less established formats never receive.
The more skeptical read is that this is the same engine Na has run for over a decade — celebrities, rural settings, unscripted manual tasks — repackaged once again, and its success says less about creative vitality in Korean variety than about how concentrated the genre’s bankable IP has become. When a PD’s brand alone can guarantee a baseline audience and ad buy regardless of format novelty, networks have less incentive to gamble on something genuinely new. Whether “콩콩팜팜” turns into a multi-season comfort-TV staple or just the latest reminder that one name can carry an entire ratings cycle will depend on whether the chemistry outlasts the novelty of watching three stars learn to milk a cow.
Sources: Nam Jung-hyun, “나영석 신작 ‘콩콩팜팜’, 동시간대 1위로 순조로운 출발,” Newsis, June 20, 2026. Kang Seo-jung, “나영석 농장예능 ‘콩콩팜팜’ 통했다…2주 연속 시청률 1위,” OSEN, June 27, 2026.
