Does K-pop “Get” the World? - Reflecting on the Socio-cultural Significance of “Gangnam Style’s” Unlikely Global Success

“See, sometimes foreigners just do not ‘get’ Korean music.  They just don’t seem to understand it!”  As an avid follower of Korean pop music that has been all the rage across Asia in the past decade, I still frequently hear about such genuine anxieties in heated discussions with those with keen interest in continued global expansion of K-pop across the world.  They see a clear “glass ceiling” for just how much Korean pop music, and Asian pop music in general, to expand beyond Asia.

In essence, their main anxiety is that of a seeming unbridgeable gap of cultural understanding between Korean and all foreign, and particularly non-Asian, countries.  They worry that even modern pop music, as the most widespread representation of Korea abroad in recent years, has that subliminal idiosyncratic nature of Korean culture that simply cannot be accepted by the non-Korean mind.

Previously largely agreeing with such a view that a unique culture expressed in artistic form is bound to hinder K-pop’s global march to some extent, I have been increasingly doubting the correctness of such a view after witnessing the latest, and perhaps the most global, K-pop phenomenon that has been under way in the last few days.

Musician PSY’s latest single “Gangnam Style,” without a single cent spent on marketing and publicity outside of Korea, managed to go completely viral on the web, clocking in more than 57 million views on Youtube at the last check and generated dozens of parodies within days of release.  The video, comically produced to intentionally make fun of itself, has gained the recognition of common people and music industry insiders from around the globe.

One simply cannot marvel at PSY’s sudden rise to global fame without at the same time marveling at the sheer irony of the phenomenon.  For years, to break into international markets, big name music labels of Korea have been investing in creating artists “suitable for international audience,” often interpreted to sport Western fashion styles, combined with once-believed universal images of youth, energy, and beauty.

Instead, now, we see emergence of a 34-year-old ajeosshi, a married father of two, slightly overweight, and in no way, not even close, to be considered good-looking (by Korean or foreign standards) or giving off the aura of luxury that is the essence of Gangnam style. 

And this man, without any defined qualification for global stardom in the eyes of the music labels, is now, somehow and completely inadvertently, leading the next attempt at global charge of K-pop internationalization.

This irony illustrates that, perhaps, it is not the world that is not “getting” K-pop, but it is K-pop that is not “getting” the world. 

For too long, the music producers of Korea have made wrong assumptions about exactly what is really universal about music.  They assumed that some sense of outward beauty and fashion can be accepted by everyone in every corner of the world, and thus made every to-down effort to instill those physical concepts into their largely manufactured artists.

Yet, in the process, they overlooked something that is truly universal at a deeper level.

Sheer joy of music, expressed in the most straightforwardly as genuine, laugh-inducing humor, is that universal factor that can be easily understood by anyone, anywhere. 

“Gangnam Style” music video contains exactly that real comical character so lacking in contemporary K-pop that has indulged in too much shallow, sterile displays of sexy but clean image, carefully crafted and maintained against the natural state of the artists.

However, at the same time, one needs to consider just how the comical nature so pervasive in the “Gangnam Style” is perceived by a non-Asian audience.  Does the fact that it became so successful symbolize existence of pure expectation, on the part of Westerners, that Asians are adapt at particular entertaining strands ofbuffoonery and self-deprecation that belittle themselves and their music?  In that case, “Gangnam Style” may just as well be a major hindrance to further acceptance of “normal” Asian music in the West, rather than a pioneer…

Yet, no matter how one chooses to perceive the phenomenon, one thing is clear.  In the field of Kpop, filled with too many fresh-faced, dance-skilled pretty girls and boys, the ajeosshi with his own style and just being his real self has breathed a puff of fresh air that caught the attention of the entire world.  Maybe if the big names in Korean music industry become keener to promote a few more genuine personalities like the humorous PSY, Kpop enthusiasts will have less anxieties of its exposure on the global music scene.