Gangnam Style

Psy spent about 30 late nights hunting for a dance. By his account to The New York Times, Korean fans expected a lot from his moves, so he and choreographer Lee Ju-sun tried out a string of deliberately cheesy animal steps, panda and kangaroo among them, before settling on an invisible horse: holding the reins, swinging a lasso, shuffling sideways at a gallop. The song itself was a joke at the expense of Seoul's Gangnam district, which Psy compared to Beverly Hills. He has explained that real Gangnam residents never boast about it; the song pokes fun at the posers who try too hard, sung by a man who looks nothing like high class. He told Reuters it was made only for local K-pop fans. Released by YG Entertainment on July 15, 2012, the video drew around 500,000 views on its first day and went viral that August. What followed was beyond anything a K-pop single had done. By the end of 2012 it had topped the charts in more than 30 countries, including Britain, France and Germany, and reached number two on the US Billboard Hot 100, then the highest placing for a South Korean artist. On December 21, 2012 it became the first YouTube video to pass a billion views. Ban Ki-moon called it a force for world peace, and Barack Obama cited it as proof of the Korean Wave. A parody of Seoul's rich, built for a home crowd, ended up being the moment the wider world noticed Korean pop.