The Birth of Korean Cool Read Free Page B

the country from the inside out; socially, culturally, and mentally. Has it worked? Well, something’s
different all right. For one thing, the emergence of irony.

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THE BIRTH OF IRONY
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    WHAT IS IRONY AND HOW CAN YOU GET IT?
    Irony is that special privilege of wealthy nations; the best purveyors of irony live at the very height of their society’s prosperity and influence, which allows them the leisure (if not
the freedom) to wax philosophic and write. Besides, it is in times of success that decadence, bluster, hypocrisy, and all the other favored topics for satire are at a fever pitch. Aristophanes,
possibly the world’s first satirist, wrote his plays as Athens was becoming the dominant power in the region. Cervantes wrote at the height of Spain’s naval wealth. And Alexander Pope
was born the year that England defeated the Spanish Armada. First, one scrambles for wealth; then one luxuriates in mocking the effeteness that comes with it.
    “Gangnam Style” and its 2013 follow-up song “Gentlemen” signaled the emergence of irony in South Korea, marking the country’s final stage in its modern evolution.
If you don’t think that irony is a measure of an elite society, think of how annoyed you  were the last time you were accused of not having any. Americans have told me that Asians have
no irony; in Europe, where I lived recently, I was told that Americans have none.
    South Korea had no irony when I arrived. I can say that as honestly as I can say that it had no McDonald’s (it arrived in 1988, in Gangnam, of course). The Korean language has no word for
irony, nor for parody, which is why the Korean press has been using the English word “parody” to describe
“
Gangnam Style.”
    “Gangnam Style,” the song and the video, are full of inside jokes about South Korea’s nouveaux riches. For example, in the opening shot, Psy appears to be lounging on a beach;
when the camera pulls away, it’s revealed he’s in an unattractive urban playground. Psy boasts of his tough-guy prowess, singing that he can down a coffee in one gulp, as if he were
talking about downing a shot of 100 proof alcohol. This is Psy’s way of saying, you Gangnam types may be rich and fancy, but your roots are humble, you’ve become a bunch of wusses with
too many skin products, and what’s more, this city still needs cleaning up.
    During the period that I lived in South Korea—the late 1980s and early 1990s—there was a steep climb in the nation’s economic development. I witnessed Seoul’s
transformation from a grim, dangerously crowded place where all designer clothes were counterfeit to a glamorous, rich global megacity where—as Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video
shows—people are fabulously well dressed but still hang out in parking garages because Seoul is overcrowded and there isn’t enough open space.
    I attended Gu-jung elementary and middle school—the highest-rated, most entitled, most hated school in the entire country. Because of our school and our neighborhood’s privileged
status, we students were expected to act in a manner befitting that reputation. My friend, who also grew up in Apgujeong, had a little brother who ended up going to high school north of the Han
River (
gangnam
means “south of the river”). When his classmates found out he was from Apgujeong, they called him
bujajip—
rich kid—and beat him bloody every
day. He started ditching class and eventually transferred to an international school.
    In 1987, every schoolchild in South Korea made a mandatory donation toward the construction of the Peace Dam, a project of then-president Chun Doo-hwan. The North Koreans were allegedly building
a dam of mass destruction close to the north-south border; it would collect water flowing from the north and then one day, when we least expected it, North Korea would unleash the water and flatten
Seoul. The retaliatory Peace Dam, to be built in the