According to the article published by Muzalive (2012, August 9), the number of Twitter references to “Gangnam Style” had increasingly grown to about 7,000 until the date of the offi- cial music video release since the release date of the first teaser video, July 11. At that time, the
epicenter of its diffusion was a fan of K-pop idol girl group2ne1,5
As soon as the original music video was released, YouTube’s active users instantly started to create several types of video clips. The first uploaded video type is a ‘reaction video,’ which refers to a new online genre where people film the audiences’ reaction while they watch a certain video. Among the selected videos, the first uploaded reaction video was published by ‘Tronzzdmco5’ on July 17, 2012. The YouTube channel is run by eight Singaporean girls who mainly listen to K-pop. They filmed two teen girls and one boy’s reaction and interviews. The next day, K-pop fans Katie and Mindy Anderson, who are sisters who live in Utah, released their
whose Twitter followers were approximately 30,000. The fan, whose Twitter ID is ‘We Love Dara,’ tweeted the original music video as soon as the official music video of Gangnam Style was published on YouTube. Howev- er, the number of Twitter references to“ Gangnam Style” has gradually decreased without any turning point until the end of July.
During this period, the highest ranked videos are mostly those which PSY’s official ac- count published. Not only did the official Gangnam Style music video but also other video clips including teaser ads and a making-film of Gangnam Style, PSY’s other music videos, and PSY’s performance in Korean TV live shows videos receive far higher view counts than any other user- generated video. One interesting thing is that two music videos of PSY’s previous album, i.e., It’s a art, and Right now which were published more than one year before the release of Gang- nam Style, have started to be highly viewed along with the mega hit of the Gangnam Style music video. This result demonstrates the fact that traditional sources produced by mainstream media tend to be recorded as “Most Viewed” and “Most Favorite” videos on YouTube, as Burgess and Green present in their book YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture (2008).
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2ne1 is a four-member South Korean girl group formed by YG Entertainment in 2009, to which PSY is affiliated. The band consists of CL, Minzy, Dara, and Bom. The twitter user, ‘We Love Dara’ seems to be a fan of Dara, one of the group members.
reaction video under the name of ‘namastedwaejikm’ on YouTube. They introduce themselves as “a bunch of fan girls who make fun of our obsession and react to the many awesome K-pop MVs out there!” on their YouTube channel.6
Another remarkable genre published in the first period is a ‘translation video.’ Since K- pop is sung in Korean, translation videos which interpret its Korean lyrics into each country’s language are simultaneously produced whenever a new K-pop song is released. The translators are not the songs’ producers themselves but K-pop fans. Like reaction-video makers, these You- Tube translators also specially focus on production of translation videos. User ‘boicesonekpop3’ uploaded a Chinese translation video on July 17, 2012. ‘Han Yong Mi,’ a Korean user, created a translation video clip with Korean and Romanized lyrics on July 20. Her YouTube activities concentrate on K-pop translation. A Vietnamese translator ‘Vietsub Dream Center’ published the video which added Vietnamese subtitles to the original music video on July 29. Among the se- lected videos, the number of translation videos is nine. Except for above-mentioned videos, the rest involved English, Spanish, and Portuguese translation videos. The production dates of these translation videos generally coincided with the time when Gangnam Style was widely introduced to each country.
On July 21, ‘Kspazzing,’ who are a couple who live in the United Kingdom, also uploaded K-pop fans’ reactions. These reaction-specialists have one thing in common with K-pop fans.
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In an interview with a blog of Korea Creative Content Agency, Katie and Mindy said that they were first interested in a K-pop idol group ‘Big Bang,’ which also belongs to YG Entertainment. They stated that they collected the information about K-pop at the website of Allkpop.com and official websites of K-pop groups and singers. Besides, they could gain information related to K-pop on YouTube, Google and Wiki- pedia. Available on
The uploaders of the translation clips are mostly running K-pop channels on YouTube or K-pop fan sites. One of the translators, ‘dearkorea’ posted several articles to intro-
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Google Trend offers a regional search function. By using this tool, the researcher was able to compare the published date of the translation videos and the time when Gangnam Style started to be widely ex- posed to each uploader’s country.
duce Gangnam Style on her own blog, apart from uploading a translation on YouTube.8
Next, the cover videos of Gangnam Style also started to be generated on YouTube in this period. ‘APUKMUSE’ uploaded a video which shot a group performance of Korean dancers on July 21. Junsung Ahn, a Korean-American violinist, published a video of him playing Gangnam Style on his violin with his dance on July 25. And the earliest parody of Gangnam Style was pro- Her ar- ticles which accounted for the meaning of “Gangnam” and its background knowledge were in- troduced through the article of Max Fisher, an editor at The Atlantic (2012, August 23). This event gave momentum to the fact that English speakers were aware of the satire of Gangnam Style.
In terms of the translation video, Seokkyeong Hong (2013) asserts that despite an illegal activity infringing copyrights and intellectual property of a cultural content, fan subbing can be considered as a very important donation of talent for self-expression or self-fulfillment as well as for the transnational audience community. Since fan subbing requires profound understanding for the contextual meanings of a content as well as language, fan subbers are intercultural elites who are familiar with languages and culture of two countries and are dedicated to their own plea- sure and transnational audience community. Without these fan subbers’ voluntary activities, Ko- rean popular content including Gangnam Style would not have spread widely and fast. For Ko- rean copyrighters who want to make inroad to global market, fan subbing is not a piracy or illeg- al behavior, but a cultural mediation to promote Korean Wave to the world.
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User “dearkorea” is a Korean American in Minnesota, USA. She introduces herself saying “My name is Jea Kim. I’m a Jill of all trades, master of none, hopefully better than a master of one. Onsemiro means ‘forever’ in Native Korean, and I’m blogging on everything I know about where I’m from.” Retrieved from
duced by ‘eat your kimchi,’ a popular video guide channel in Korea, on July 23.9