The video for “Gangnam Style,” a pop song by Korean rap star Psy (short for Psycho), has been raging across the world.
It has racked up 221 million YouTube views as of this writing and is the number one song downloaded on iTunes. Psy himself has been on a media tear in the United States and has appeared on the MTV Video Music Awards, Ellen (twice), The Today Show and Saturday Night Live.
And if you haven’t yet seen him, his addictive video or any of the many parodies it has spawned (by the Oregon Duck mascot, Naval Academy cadets, a wedding party, lifeguards and more), get ready to see more of him, because he has signed with Scooter Braun, the man who made stars of Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen.
But there’s no reason for a personal finance site to be writing about a silly song known for its horse-riding dance, right? Well, actually, it turns out this addictively catchy song and its accompanying video relay a lesson that could help you with your own spending habits.
What Gangnam Style Is All About
The words “gang” and “nam” literally mean “south of the river,” but Gangnam with a capital G is an upscale neighborhood of Seoul (you guessed it) on the south side of the river. As the Beverly Hills of South Korea’s biggest city, it also occupies a psychic place in the minds of Korea’s 99% and represents the luxurious life for which they strive.
The neighborhood is just seven square miles but holds 7% of Korea’s GDP. For comparison, New York state, which is 3,000 times the size of Gangnam holds 7% of U.S. GDP. Forty-one percent of students at the nation’s most prestigious college, Seoul University, come from Gangnam, which in the U.S., would be like having 41% of Harvard students come from Manhattan.
The neighborhood is full of high-rise apartment buildings, high-end department stores, the city’s trendiest boutiques and hottest clubs, and a lot of plastic surgery clinics. As U.S.-based Korean blogger Jae Kim says in her analysis of the song, “In short, it’s like the U.S. Upper East Side plus Beverly Hills minus tradition; or I’d rather say it’s more like ‘Dubai’”–and here, she refers to the area’s recent development–”built on Korean cabbage and Korean pear fields.”
What ‘Gangnam Style’ The Song Is About
But Psy’s rendering of “Gangnam Style” highlights the superficiality of this dream. In the opening scene, Psy is lounging on a beach, dreaming he is being fanned by a beautiful girl. As the camera pans out, you realize he is actually lying on a chair in a sandy children’s playground.
Then you see him in a tux with a girl on each arm, strutting as though down a red carpet, except they appear to be in an underground parking lot, and instead of confetti fluttering down upon them, trash is flying at them with blizzard-like force.
In another scene, he parties like a rock star in a bus outfitted with disco balls, but his fellow partygoers are retirees wearing sun visors.
Meanwhile, in all these scenes, he’s dancing as though he’s riding an invisible horse, almost as though he’s the knight of his own imaginary Camelot.
