Rumors that world travel YouTuber GilBaDak had gone missing have been put to rest after the creator personally checked in to confirm she is safe.

On the night of October 22, GilBaDak hosted a YouTube live stream to announce her well-being in person, stating, "I'm not being threatened or confined. No one is locking me up". The broadcast came a year after she halted all public activity following her last video documenting a trip to India.

During the stream, GilBaDak revealed that she is currently living in Australia, not South Korea, and rotated the camera to display her surroundings in response to viewers' requests. When some viewers voiced suspicions that she might be an AI, she replied several times, "I'm not an AI," and clapped her hands on screen to verify that the broadcast was taking place in real time.

GilBaDak pointed to a previous post she had written as the catalyst that amplified the suspicions. After concerned comments began appearing under her uploads, she shared a check-in post on the channel's Community tab, but explained that writing it in a rush ended up deepening the doubts.

"If I had written the post better, people wouldn't have doubted it, but I think writing it so casually was the problem. I didn't use periods," she said. Addressing claims that Shorts titles or comments had been modified or erased, she clarified, "Other than edits made at the time of uploading, I haven't logged into YouTube in over a year".

Explaining the long hiatus, GilBaDak said, "It's been a little over a year since I arrived in Australia, and I was mostly just working. With visa issues on top of that, things were chaotic. My MacBook, which got water-damaged during my travels, wasn't working properly, making editing difficult". She added, "My mother reached out to me in the morning, and a flood of messages poured in from acquaintances. That's why I started the live stream right away. I also asked the broadcasting station to take down their post regarding me".

Lastly, GilBaDak expressed her thoughts, saying, "I'm truly grateful to everyone who worried about me. While it was tough to see people worrying to an extreme degree, I plan to upload a video as soon as possible and will likely visit Korea briefly around winter or spring."

GilBaDak had previously gained viewers by uploading budget backpacking travel content, but had ceased posting new videos after releasing an India travel video in May of last year.

(SBS Entertainment News | Kang Kyung-youn)