한류 2012

Sorry that I haven't posted anything yet! I am living the oh-so-lavish lifestyle of a doctoral student doing dissertation fieldwork in Seoul... which is to say that I am scraping by on my grant money and generally being lazy and calling it "research." Anyway, I was inspired to write something today because I'm curious about the the global reach of Gangnam Style. For the past few months, friends from all over the place have been occasionally sending me emails asking "what's a Gangnam style?" or whether I've heard the song (yes, I have heard it; no, I have never been able to sit through the entire video). My advisor thinks that I am going to have to work it into my dissertation somehow because of the whole transnational aspect (anthropologists--who are not me--seem to love the word "transnationalism," even though it's essentially an empty signifier/substitute for "globalization," which went out of vogue in the late '90s). Today I got an email from my Mom about it, and figured "that's it, this phenomenon has gotten out of control." If a post-menopausal woman in rural Maine has heard the song, then who hasn't?

I've had a bit of a difficult time grasping the actual global impact that the song has had. I heard about it on the Interwebs a few weeks before I ever heard the song in Korea, some time in July I think. I remember that it was during the run-up to the Olympics. I could be completely and utterly wrong about this--it would definitely not be the first time--but I get the sense that the video went viral and became popular elsewhere before it was actually popular in Korea, and thus its popularity here is due somewhat to the very fact that it caught on globally in the first place. Of course, PSY was already a semi-successful Korean "rapper," but my friends--*ahem* "informants"--tell me that he was most well-known for a) having to do his military service twice because of a bureaucratic snafu the first time around, and b) for getting caught smoking weed. There was a point in late August/early September when I probably heard the song an average of three times daily while I was just doing participant observation in PC bangs and walking through the streets of the city. Last month it seemed like every guild in the online game that I am participating in (Lineage II) had some sort of variation of the chorus attached to the text that floats above their characters' heads in the game, substituting different cities and neighborhoods for Gangnam or playing upon the name itself, e.g. "오빤 꽝놤 스타일." Another popular game (Sudden Attack) had a special event where users could unlock an achievement that allowed them to play as a PSY avatar (I think...). The song's popularity seems to be waning here a little bit, but then again I am woefully--and if I'm being honest willfully--ignorant about all things K-Pop. I know from riding the subway that G-Dragon has a new album out, and Kara's "Pandora" video is being played all over the place. But then I go online and see things like this and have to think to myself, "Wow, is this the biggest global hit ever in Korean pop music history?"

The Atlantic did this piece about some of the more nuanced aspects of social satire that the song contains, which is probably a good analysis. Anyway, my question to you all is when did you first hear about/hear the song, and how did you hear about it?