The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20170705161953/https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/08/28/gangnam-style-viral-popularity-in-u-s-has-koreans-puzzled-gratified/
DOW JONES, A NEWS CORP COMPANY
Sections
Aim higher, reach further.
Get the Wall Street Journal $12 for 12 weeks. Subscribe Now
  • Gangnam Style’s U.S. Popularity Has Koreans Puzzled, Gratified

    Once upon a time, if you’d asked a Korean (go on! Ask a Korean!) which of their uncountable legions of musical luminaries was most likely to crack the blast-hardened firewall of the American market, they’d have offered up curvaceous crooners like Lee Hyori or BoA, floppy-haired dreamboats like Rain or Kim Hyun Joong, or mega-girl groups and boy bands like Girls Generation and Super Junior.

    And why not? These finely tuned, precision-machined performers represent the pinnacle of technology in a market that has transformed the crafting of bubblegum idols into a wildly lucrative multimedia industry. So the unlikely emergence of Park Jae-Song, the chubby, 34-year-old rapper

    known as PSY, as the face of K-pop, after the explosive success of his rollicking video for “Gangnam Style,” has been greeted by Koreans with a blinking neon “WTF.”

    “People are surprised — bewildered, really — at his popularity abroad,” says Susan Kang, chief evangelist for Soompi.com, the mammoth online site dedicated to Korean pop music. “You have people saying, ‘We have all these beautiful guys and girls that have tried to break through to the U.S. market with little success. So why PSY?’ But of course they are embracing it to the fullest, and it’s causing a renewed interest in and respect for his music.”

    Popular on WSJ