A chubby thirty-something with wacky dance moves, Park Jae-sang falls far short of the prettified, teenage ideal embodied by the stars of South Korea’s phenomenally successful K-pop industry.
However, Park, known as “Psy,” has succeeded where the industry-manufactured girl and boy bands have tried and failed, making a huge splash on the mainstream US music scene thanks to a viral video and a rare sense of irony.
Since being posted on YouTube in July, Psy’s video for Gangnam Style — the title song of his sixth album — has racked up more than 150 million views and spawned a host of admiring parodies.
The accompanying worldwide publicity has earned him a US contract with Justin Bieber’s management agency, a guest appearance at last week’s MTV awards in Los Angeles and a spot on NBC’s flagship Today show.
Earlier this week he was given the opportunity to school US pop diva Britney Spears on his increasingly famous signature dance moves on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The breakout success of Gangnam Style has been viewed with a mixture of pride and surprise in Psy’s home country, with industry analysts scrabbling to identify the magic ingredient that made it such a phenomenal success abroad.
The “Gangnam” of the title is Seoul’s wealthiest residential and shopping district, lined with luxury boutiques, top-end bars and restaurants frequented by celebrities and well-heeled, designer-clad socialites.
The video pokes fun at the district’s lifestyle, with Psy breezing through a world of speed boats, yoga classes and exclusive clubs — all the while performing an eccentric horse-riding dance accompanied by beautiful models.
Humor, especially satirical humor, is rare in the mainstream South Korean music scene, and that coupled with the 34-year-old’s embrace of his anti-pop idol looks has helped set him apart.
According to Simon Stawski, the Canadian co-founder of the popular Eat Your Kimchi blog on K-pop and Korean culture, Psy is the “antithesis of K-pop” and its stable of preening, sexualized, fashion-conscious young stars.
“K-pop bands are exceptionally controlled by their management. Psy doesn’t buy into that at all, and that’s partly why he’s such a breath of fresh air,” Stawski said.
“Above all, Psy doesn’t take himself seriously and uses irony and self-deprecation that are absent from K-pop,” he said.
In South Korea, Gangnam Style has won Psy a new fan base by appealing to those for whom the sanitized image of K-pop bears little resemblance to their actual lives.
“His somewhat ‘normal’ appearance makes him feel familiar, and the comic dancing and wacky fashion style give off a friendly image, branding Psy as someone people would want to party with,” the daily Munhwa Ilbo commented.
Psy himself says he invites laughter, not ridicule.
“My motto is to be funny, but not stupid,” he said in an interview with the Yonhap news agency.
“I want everyone who sees my performance to feel the efforts I’ve made so far as a singer rather than a lucky guy who got here without anything,” he said.
A relative veteran after 11 years on the South Korean music scene, Psy has always had a small, but loyal fan base that has stuck with him through numerous ups and downs, including an early brush with the law for smoking marijuana.
His overnight leap from relative obscurity to global sensation came as a personal, if welcome, shock.
“It’s all so surreal to me,” he told Yonhap. “I never thought such a day would come in my life as a singer.”
It remains to be seen if Gangnam Style will prove to be anything more than a one-hit wonder, but its success so far, especially in the US, is likely to prompt a review of marketing strategies in the South Korean music industry.
“It’s not going to be a revolution, but more of a baby-steps evolution,” said Esther Oh, online news editor at CJ Entertainment, the country’s largest media conglomerate.
“Psy has shown you can be successful as a human, regular guy with a touch of humor. Other artists and management companies are going to look at that and maybe rethink their own styles and strategies,” Oh said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in