Why gangnam style is popular

But in , the country came close to bankruptcy. This resulted in formerly large, state-controlled companies such as Samsung becoming liberalised. But in South Korea this is extreme. In the liberalised South Korea, pop music and TV have become export articles that are sold to the other Asian countries. The so-called K-pop Korean pop is far cheaper than for instance Japanese pop products.

View Iframe URL. 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. 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. 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.

His voice, his dance moves, his expressions of the face — they all show off his enthusiasm towards music. In order for the video to be an international hit, it first had to be a hit in South Korea. So they decided to bring in three popular personalities of the country into the video, apart from Psy himself.

Then the second one was Yoo Jae-suk , a popular comedian and TV host of the country, who appears in a dark yellow suit in the video.

And the third one is No Hong-chul , the person who has been famously called the elevator guy as he appears in an elevator in the video. He too is a comedian and a show host of South Korea. As far as my research shows, Gizmodo was the first mainstream news site to run a story on the video on 26th July, , 11 days after it was launched. Kat Hannaford of Gizmodo wrote just a few lines about it, embedding the video in the article, and linking to the English translation of the lyrics.

Then on the 30th of that month Gawker wrote a small article on it. This article got 18 thousand Facebook likes! This was followed by Billboard who published a story on Gangnam on July 31st. Billboard said:. This caused some controversy in the blogosphere. Controversy causes discussions and thus gives more visibility to the object in question.

I believe the Billboard article was one of the prominent reasons which drove traffic to the video. Then the video was featured in a lot of other big media publications. However Psy and YG had a trump card up their sleeve which they played out on 3rd September. TV personality No Hong-chul provided the infamous elevator dance, with K-pop star Hyuna featured as the romantic interest. Psy had already built a reputation for his memorably silly dance moves.

Released on July 15, , the song galloped straight out of the gates, with , YouTube views on its first day.

US rapper T-Pain was reportedly the first to give the track his endorsement when he tweeted enthusiastically about it, on July Before long, a cavalcade of stars, among them Britney Spears, Katy Perry , Tom Cruise and Robbie Williams , had picked up on it, too, introducing the song to their millions of followers and creating a viral sensation in the process.