Gangnam Style is Actually Subversive

We've told you about the South Korean viral hit Gangnam Style by K-Pop musician Park Jae-Sang. The song with the silly "let's ride an invisible horse" dance move actually belies a subversive message.

Max Fisher of The Atlantic explains:

This skewering of the Gangnam life can be easy to miss for non-Korean. Psy boasts that he's a real man who drinks a whole cup of coffee in one gulp, for example, insisting he wants a women who drinks coffee. "I think some of you may be wondering why he's making such a big deal out of coffee, but it's not your ordinary coffee," U.S.-based Korean blogger Jea Kim wrote at her site, My Dear Korea. (Her English-subtitled translation of the video is at right.) "In Korea, there's a joke poking fun at women who eat 2,000-won (about $2) ramen for lunch and then spend 6,000 won on Starbucks coffee." They're called Doenjangnyeo, or "soybean paste women" for their propensity to crimp on essentials so they can over-spend on conspicuous luxuries, of which coffee is, believe it or not, one of the most common. "The number of coffee shops has gone up tremendously, particularly in Gangnam," Hong said. "Coffee shops have become the place where people go to be seen and spend ridiculous amounts of money."

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Where I live (Sydney Australia), it would be "Newtown Style" or "Glebe style" or maybe even just "hipster style" for a less geographically precise name.
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