Gangnam Style Hits on the Road

Gangnam style, a song performed by South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang, better known by his stage name PSY. When the single was first released on July 15, nobody predicted it would become so hot around the world. In less than three months, its music video has garnered more than 300 million views on YouTube, and it has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the “Most ‘Liked’ Video in YouTube History”.

As the song continued to gain popularity around the world, its dance steps were not only imitated by common people and movie stars in various shows but also were performed by several business and political leaders including Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, the British Prime Minister David Cameron and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. On Oct 23, 2012, the singer Psy (R) practices some “Gangnam Style” dance steps with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during a photo opportunity at the UN headquarters in New York . Recently, a derivative of the Gangnam style appears on the net and attracted numerous pageviews. Jesse Appell, a Fullbright scholar and online viral video sensation, came to Beijing with a brief to research Chinese comedy and ended up with producing a “Laowai Style (Foreign style)”. Less than seven days later his video has been seen by around 500,000 people. The emulate “Gangnam Style” was played at various places (in Beijing) including Tsinghua University, the Drum Tower and the Bird’s Nest.