HAchubby, the South Korean Twitch streamer who built a devoted international audience on Just Chatting, music and IRL broadcasts, has told her viewers she has been diagnosed with cancer. She got the news this week in the most public way possible, live on her own stream, looking at her phone as her chat watched it land.
She had gone into her November 4 stream waiting on test results, and almost two hours in, she broke down as the answer arrived. “They said I have cancer,” she told chat. “They still don’t know what stage it is. They don’t know the details yet.” Hours later, she shared the little she knows so far: “They don’t know, yet, the stage. I don’t know how bad it is. I feel pain, only in a specific part.” Her translator added that doctors found “some aggressive things.” She has not shared what type of cancer it is, and she has asked fans not to worry too much.
The next day, she put her plan in writing on X: “I was diagnosed with cancer today. It seems like it may be close to spreading, so I’m planning to go to Korea right away for treatment. Sadly, I had to cancel my TwitchCon plans. Please don’t worry too much. I found good doctor and I’ll keep streaming from Korea, too.” She added that she is gathering her test results and records and packing, and that her hospital in the United States will transfer her records to her doctors in Korea.
For readers meeting her here for the first time, HAchubby, 36, is a classically trained musician from Seoul who started streaming around 2018 while working at a convenience store. In 2021 she opened her own store in Busan, HAchuMart, a longtime dream that became part of her channel’s identity. When Twitch announced it would shut down in South Korea, her emotional on-stream farewell with fellow streamer Charming Jo became one of the defining moments of that closure. She relocated to the United States and rebuilt her audience with IRL and travel broadcasts, learning English along the way to reach the viewers she has now.
Word of her diagnosis traveled fast. Pokimane replied to her post wishing her a speedy treatment and recovery, Twitch’s official X account responded as well, and fellow streamers have rallied around her publicly, with coverage from outlets including Dexerto carrying her announcement well beyond her own audience.
It is the other side of learning the hardest news of your life in front of a crowd: the crowd shows up. True to her word, she plans to keep streaming from Korea, and her community clearly intends to be there when she does.
To show your support, you can visit HAchubby on Twitch.