Geography of Gangnam Style

With about half a billion views as of this writing, the video for the song Gangnam Style is the most popular video ever on YouTube. The song is nearly completely sung in Korean by recording artist Park Jaesang (known as Psy), yet it has become an international sensation, adding to the growing Korean pop music scene known as K-pop.

Numerous articles have been written that discuss the phenomenon of K-pop and of Park's instant success. The Atlantic refers to the geography of the place called Gangnam itself in their article about the song, "Gangnam is a tony Seoul neighborhood, and Park's "Gangnam Style" video lampoons its self-importance and ostentatious wealth, with Psy playing a clownish caricature of a Gangnam man." On a larger scale, Foreign Policy suggests that K-pop is a bellwether that trends and foci are changing in the international global economy.

NPR's Planet Money podcast produced an excellent episode about the development of the South Korean pop music scene, which is merely twenty years old. They discuss how the country has been developing K-pop as an industry and Gangnam Style is the initial zenith marking the success of K-pop. It was also approximately twenty years ago that the value of goods crossing the Pacific Ocean exceeded the value of goods crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The fact that the world's most popular Internet video comes from one of the "countries" called the Economic Tigers. This geographer sees the popularity of Gangnam Style and K-pop indeed as a portent of a changing world.

Finally, don't miss geographer Seth Dixon's post on the Cultural Geography of a Viral Sensation which includes a impressive infographic as well as parody spinoffs of the original Gangnam Style video. (Image: Korean rapper Psy dances his Gangnam Syle dance at the Korean Formula One Grand Prix in Yeongam-gun, South Korea on October 14, 2012. Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images)