Forefather of K-Pop: What Became of “Gangnam Style” Singer Psy?

Cowboy moves as dance steps, Korean lyrics and electronic dance music the world hadn’t heard before – these ingredients made Psy a surprise hit in 2012 and a record on YouTube. Never before has a music act racked up a billion views on the world’s largest video streaming platform. His hit “Gangnam Style” changed a lot. He changed the music world and no less than the view of his home country – South Korea. Since then, K-pop has been a fixture in music and one of the most important export goods of the Asian country The founding father of the music revolution hasn’t been heard outside of his native South Korea for a long time.Park Jae-sang was supposed to follow in his father’s footsteps as an executive at his semiconductor company DI.But while studying in the US, he fell in love with electronic music. He returned to Seoul, called himself Psy, and released his first album in 2001. It would be eleven years before his satire on Gangnam, a posh and trendy Seoul neighborhood, with its carefully choreographed horse-style dance, went viral on YouTube. After that, Psy filled stadia mostly in his homeland and his own pockets… Today, Psy is said to have an estimated net worth thanks to “Gangnam Style”. of up to $65 million. Psy continued to record albums, perform in live shows and also in South Korean TV series where he played himself. However, the Korean never came close to his success from 2012. Park founded the music agency P-Nation in 2019 to mentor and support other artists in the K-Pop universe. 2021 also ended its reign as Korea’s biggest chart hit of all time by K-pop icons BTS with their single Dynamite.