Like PSY, they never planned to expand outside Korea, but have become the country’s biggest pop act and are now starting to collaborate with Western pop acts. Recently, BTS-another boy band pulling off successful treks around America-attracted attention after beating the likes of Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez to win Billboard’s fan-driven Top Social Artist Award. Acts like SHINee, EXO, and Seventeen sell out several-thousand-capacity venues around the country, while KCon gatherings in New Jersey and Los Angeles attract tens of thousands of fans alongside top-level acts.
As for America, K-pop heavyweights like G-Dragon and CL have failed to connect widely here, and PSY himself never reached anything near the same level of success (unless you count a Super Bowl commercial for pistachios), but still, the genre has achieved an impressive level of stateside success. China is reportedly lightening up on the policy, but Korea’s entertainment industry has been affected significantly so far.ĭespite politicized backlash, K-pop has become the standard sound in Asia.
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Real-world politics have also reached K-pop, highlighted by China’s decision to “ ban” entertainment from South Korea last year over the country’s decision to install the U.S. “However, over the past decade, more and more songs on international ‘pop’ music charts in Asia are not sung in English but in Korean because K-Pop artists are now outselling, outperforming, and outranking Western superstars.” Korean acts have become so big that it has sparked various kickbacks, ranging from Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou calling on compatriots to stop doing the “Gangnam Style” dance, while Japanese broadcasters have at times refused to let popular Korean outfits appear on their airwaves. “Traditionally, international ‘pop’ music in Asia has been synonymous with popular Western music acts,” Cho says.
With the potential revealed by PSY clear, K-pop agencies started tailoring new and rising groups towards Asian markets, featuring members from Asian countries beyond Korea in an effort to connect with those nations. Before, the “Korean wave” was an emerging industry using the internet to reach as many people globally as possible. “Gangnam Style” served as a dividing line in K-pop, intentionally or coincidentally. Whereas he was a popular, funny meme in America, PSY ended up a popular, funny performer in Asia: He continues to release albums and videos that do well commercially across the region. Anecdotally, I’ve seen “Gangnam Style” chicken restaurants in Indonesia and multiple street vendors selling PSY-shaped balloons in Singapore, four years after the song’s success.
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PSY proved especially popular around the continent, topping charts across Southeast Asia and in China, even appearing on Chinese New Year TV specials-a valuable inroad to a burgeoning market. “Asia has always been the target,” Mimyo adds, noting the inroads Korean music had made across the region the decade before. Though the West was more aware of Korean music than ever before, America wasn’t the primary target. “Korea finally acknowledged that an international K-pop market was possible,” Mimyo says. “There were tons of useless articles like, ‘The dance moves are from our ancestors being horse riders.’”Įlsewhere, views of Korean artists’ videos tripled following “Gangnam Style,” according to YouTube data. “That song was strongly interpreted as a heroic achievement by nationalists, with K-pop ‘conquering the world,’” says Mimyo, K-pop critic and founder of the site Idology. Today, you can visit a giant bronze sculpture in Seoul that's modeled after PSY’s hands, mid-pony move in the “Gangnam Style” video.
In Korea, “Gangnam Style” was treated as a point of pride, highlighted by a massive PSY concert that attracted over 80,000 fans. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. “Gangnam Style,” however, looked and sounded nothing like the K-pop norm, its big EDM chorus poking fun at the upper-class Seoul neighborhood of Gangnam. K-pop, with its controlled star-grooming system and skilled performance groups, was starting to get attention internationally and inspire an avalanche of trend pieces. But nobody expected anyone abroad to notice. Released July 15, 2012, “Gangnam Style” immediately reached the top of South Korea’s music charts, as one would expect from PSY (real name Park Jae-sang), a rapper boasting nationwide success over the previous decade. Alas, Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s plodding Fast & Furious ballad “ See You Again” finally leap-frogged over “Gangnam Style”-a changing of the guard that arrives just as PSY’s hit celebrates its fifth anniversary. Korean pop star PSY had held the title since November 2012, when he became the first person to reach 1 billion views, then 2 billion, breaking YouTube’s view counter in the process.
Earlier this week, “Gangnam Style” was knocked off its perch as the most viewed video on YouTube.
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