Oppan Gangnam Style

So, I guess I've avoided it for long enough.

There's this song called Gangnam Style. Maybe you've heard of it by now.

As of my writing this, the video has almost 665 million views worldwide since its release three-ish months ago, and I probably even got that number wrong. I'm sure it's at least three times that amount.  And from what I understand it's not slowing and may even be continuing to pick up momentum.

I'm sure everybody else can attest to its presence in the USA.  As I've been in Korea since roughly the beginning of its popularity, I'm not capable of doing so.  I remember seeing gifs of it on Tumblr as it started its onset to being the unholy result of Psy selling his soul to the Macarena, but it wasn't playing in bars, or football games, or encouraging drunks to horsey dance madly into oncoming traffic like I'm hearing secondhandedly is happening now.

Here in Korea, I can assure you that it's even worse. I've checked times. You can't go more than 12 hours without hearing the song, and that's provided you get eight hours of sleep in your own house.  It plays at least twice anytime I'm out at a bar, my students want me to play it in class, people have it as their ringtones, companies that Psy has done advertisements for blast the song or their own variant of the song constantly during their opening hours.

I've seen dollar stores that have replaced their entire signage with the cartoon image of Psy. You can purchase Psy's image on socks and tshirts on the street. Norebangs have his image plastered on them. If you talk to a Korean person for the first time, especially if you meet them in a bar, and double especially if they don't actually speak English, they are going to ask you if you know Gangnam Style, and then you will somehow end up doing the Gangnam dance with them and in all probability the music will start playing.  If you talk to anybody about Gangnam style, at some point you will hear the music, as if it is being summoned.  The song has become an abyssal fiend capable of infiltrating any part of existence where it is mentioned.

It is, quite actually, inescapable.

Take a second and let's think about why.

I want you to reflect for a second.  Think about everything you know about Korea.  Historical, customs, stereotypes, racism, all of it.

Alright. Get rid of the word 'kimchi'. Now take out the stuff that is the Korean War.  Take away North Korea. No Samsung or LG. Take out everything that is an overlap with your Chinese/Japanese/your collective Asian stereotypes (you monster).

Do you actually have anything left?  If you do, congratulations, most people I've attempted this exercise on go 'woah, I see your point, I know NOTHING about South Korea.'

I'm not going to lie, I was the same way before I came here.  What did I know about the country?  I knew the 'Gee Gee Baby' song from Girls' Generation.  I knew what Hanboks were from Koreans I spoke to when I was in Japan, and I knew a bit about the food because we had a Korean restaurant on my university campus.

But this is S.Korea's big foray into the world market.  Everybody here loves their country, but they're fully aware that it doesn't really exist in the world's collective consciousness. People go to Japan for vacation, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Phillippines, Singapore...somehow a lot of people overlook South Korea.  Maybe it's the threat of North Korea? Maybe they just generally don't think about it.  I'll admit in my shame that I never really paid attention to the South of Korea myself before I wound up here.

And that's a shame, because now the country is reduced to forming its media identity around an earworm song that gained international fame, that the original artist doesn't even like that much.