A decade of hallyu scholarship : toward a new direction in hallyu 2.0

• Main Author: Lee, Sangjoon
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: University of Michigan Press 2020
• Subjects: Social sciences::Communication; Korean Pop Culture; Social Media
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/143911
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

On May 22, 2013, South Korean (hereafter Korean)-born and U.S.-educated Korean pop musician Psy (Park Jae-sang) had an interview with MTV and told that he is wrapping up the promotional run of his “Gentleman” single in order to work on his first U.S. album (Montgomery 2013). His first global-targeted single “Gentleman” has already reached the fifth position on the Billboard singles chart, number one in Denmark, Finland, Luxemburg, and Korea, and topped iTunes charts in over forty countries. “Gentleman” was a follow-up single of Psy’s hugely successful “Gangnam Style” which had stormed the world in the summer of 2012 (see Hu, this volume). “Gentleman” was his first attempt to prove that he is not a mere ‘one-hit wonder’ and the penetration of the seemingly unbreakable the U.S. pop music market was not an anecdote to the U.S. pop music history as what Los del Rio, Lou Bega, and Falco have already proved. The Huffington Post, right before the release of “Gentleman,” questioned: “Will the Internet's favorite pony dancer rise above one-hit-wonder designation? Will a new "Gentleman" themed dance craze sweep the globe?” (Anon. 2013). “Gentleman” has exceeded any previous record by becoming the fastest music video to reach 300 million views on YouTube after only three weeks of its initial release. As of December 2013, the music video marked 598 million hits on YouTube, becoming the most-viewed video of 2013 (Lewis 2013). “Gentleman” is still far less than the 1.9 billion views of “Gangnam Style” but enough to be placed as one of the year’s successful pop singles.