1. Yoo Heekyung
1346018
What’s the Secret to K-pop Success in the U.S.? Only Psy Knows
There is an amazing singer who attained more than 1.5 billion global views on
YouTube. Everyone will know who he is, the Korean singer Psy, who is now enjoying
international popularity with his song “Gangnam style”. Many other Korean pop stars
attempted to break into the western market, but returned empty-handed. That is why Psy’s
worldwide tremendous popularity is more unexpected and surprising. I think there are
obvious reasons for popular K-pop stars failure in the Western market and the success of Psy,
an ordinary solo artist.
The main reason for K-pop star’s failure in the western market is that they lose their
own characteristic and just try to resemble western singers. To break through the American
mainstream, they work with American producers and record English songs. As a result, there
is no difference between American singers and Korean singers except appearance. For
example, famous K-pop stars BoA, Seven, Wondergirls, and SNSD set up sophisticated
strategies for their U.S. debuts and recorded English versions of their songs featuring by
famous U.S. singers. Nevertheless, they did not make significant impact because there are
already many other Western singers similar to them.
Unlike the singers mentioned above, Psy’s distinct comedy and creativity caught
America’s interest at once. “Gangnam style” does not imitate anyone and it has his own
characteristic. He made the album by himself because he did not have any intention to break
through American market. Even “Gangnam style” is not an English song but a Korean song,
finally it makes a big success because of its funny music video and easy-to-follow melody.
Obviously, originality and pure entertaining allows Psy to gain international popularity.

2. Certainly there are significant reasons for Phy’s big success in the worldwide market
and failure of K-pop stars. K-pop star’s strategies for copying western singers make them to
fail. On the contrary, Phy’s original characteristic was the most important part of his
unexpected popularity. As we seeing these, not similarity but originality can entertain all the
worldwide people purely. Therefore, instead of following western singers, Korean singers
should pursue their original characteristics to gain international popularity.