South Korean rapper PSY’s Gangnam Style video has more than 200 million YouTube views and counting. No Korean language skills are needed to enjoy the crazy horse-riding dance, the song’s addictive chorus or the video’s odd series of misadventures.
Beneath the surface, however, is a sharp social commentary about the country’s newly rich and Gangnam, the affluent district where many of them live. Gangnam is only a small slice of Seoul but it inspires a mixture of desire, envy and bitterness. The most coveted address in Korea, the district of Gangnam, which literally means “south of the river,” is about half the size of Manhattan and about 1 per cent of Seoul’s population lives here.
But many of its residents are very rich. The average Gangnam apartment costs about $716,000 (about Dh2 million), a sum that would take an average South Korean household 18 years to earn. The neighbourhood’s residents are seen by some as monopolising the country’s best education opportunities, the best cultural offerings and the best infrastructure.
Kim Zakka, a Seoul-based pop music critic, says, “Gangnam residents are South Korea’s upper class but South Koreans consider them self-interested, with no sense of noblesse oblige.” In a sly, entertaining way, PSY’s song pushes these cultural buttons.
How did 34-year-old rapper Park Jae-sang, or PSY, get to be the one teaching Britney Spears how to do the horse-riding dance on American TV? PSY attributes his success to “soul or attitude.” The rapper, whose stage name stems from the first three letters of the word psycho, has always styled himself as a quirky outsider. But he is from a wealthy family and was actually raised and educated near Gangnam. An excellent dancer, a confident rapper and he’s funny, but another reason for his breakthrough could be a less-than-polished image, says Jae-Ha Kim, a Chicago Tribune pop culture columnist and former music critic. Part of the initial interest in Gangnam Style,” Kim says, was a kind of “freak-show mentality, where people are like, ‘this guy is funny.’ But then you look at his choreography and you realise you really have to know how to dance to do what he does. He’s really good.”
PSY repeatedly flouts South Koreans’ popular notions of Gangnam in his video. Instead of cavorting in nightclubs, he parties with retirees on a disco-lighted tour bus. Instead of working out in a high-end health club, he lounges in a sauna with tattooed gangsters. As he struts along with two beautiful models, they’re pelted by wind-blown trash and sticky confetti. The throne from which he delivers his hip-hop swagger is a toilet.
Baak Eun-seok, a pop music critic, says, “PSY looks like a country bumpkin, a far cry from the so-called Gangnam Style. He’s parodying himself.”
Video goes viral
Even North Korea is paying attention to “Gangnam Style”. The North has posted a video on its official Uriminzokkiri website of a horse-dancing PSY character that has a photo of conservative South Korean presidential candidate Park Geun-hye’s face transposed on it.
The lyrics satirically defend Park’s late dictator father, Park Chung-hee. Park, a front-runner in polls ahead of December’s presidential elections, has faced criticism that she hasn’t adequately addressed her father’s legacy. Park Chung-hee is seen by supporters as an important factor in South Korea’s economic rise from the Korean War.
