What a turnaround: Sunday, just two days after news broke of Psy’s early anti-American ranting, the YouTube sensation entertained the Obamas and Veep Joe Biden at Washington’s premier holiday event.
Psy, the 34-year-old South Korean dancing and rapping star, can teach us a thing or two about how the world sees America.
His “Gangnam Style” hit — a spoof of the oh-too-hip crowd hanging out in Seoul’s Gangnam district — started in a South Korean Web-oriented hit-making pop factory, then Scooter Braun (the music impresario behind stars like Justin Bieber) brought it over here.
With a bevy of beauties dancing along with chubby, bouncing Park Jae-sang (Psy’s real name), the video has 917 million YouTube hits and counting. Wow.
The international art crowd took notice. China’s most celebrated dissident artist, Ai Weiwei, just released a YouTube “Gangnam Style” video, repeating Psy’s moves with handcuffs on.
But capitalist America noticed, too. Madonna sang a duet with Psy. Alan Simpson made a “Gangnam Style”-style video (a message from a Medicare-client geezer to the “young people” that will have to pay his bills). And the White House invited Psy to perform in Sunday’s “Christmas in Washington” event.
But on Friday it all threatened to come crashing: Turns out Psy was an America-disser.
In 2002, a US vehicle killed two teen girls in a Seoul suburb. The accident was elevated by South Korea’s anti-Americans to nearly a war crime — and Psy (a graduate of Boston University’s business school) jumped on the bandwagon.
In one performance, he smashed a model of a US-made Bradley Fighting Vehicle on stage. Two years later, he reprised a metal number, “Dear American,” which called for the killing of US soldiers and their families.
So, once again: Why do they hate us so much?
For Koreans, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon once told me, it’s a generational thing. His peers, who grew up during the Korean War, are extremely grateful. “If it wasn’t for America, I would have become a faceless bureaucrat serving North Korea,” Ban often says.
But for those who grew up long after the war, America — and especially the troops stationed in the 38th parallel — symbolizes a sort of occupation. Since the late 1970s, Seoul’s “Yankees go home” crowds have clashed with police in riot gear while shouting anti-US slogans and calling for peace with North Korea — as if only America stands in its way.
That’s the tradition that Psy’s art-politico anti-American protest drew on.
“I fully regret those words,” Psy is now telling American interviewers. The rashness of his youth is no longer: Since the early 2000s, he’d gotten married, had twins and even served in the Korean army. He now fully knows what’s what.
But as Psy contemplates how to resume cashing in on his fame, the trajectory of his pop persona — from America-hater to contrite wooer of Yankee dollars — is worth noting.
It’s a well-worn trajectory. To paraphrase an old cliché: If you don’t question America in your 20s, you’re heartless; if you still hate it in your 30s, you’re brainless. (And no, the dynamic hasn’t changed a whit under President Obama, as countless polls indicate.)
Korea isn’t alone. From Old Europe to Latin America, young people with minds filled by Oliver Stone-style pseudo-history go on barricades to protest America and the evils they think it represents. Later (for those with a brain), their eyes open to the benefit their neck of the woods derives from America — and the opportunities that doing business with it represent.
In Psy’s homeland, there’s a pointed reminder of reality — in the form of the dangerously lunatic regime north of the 38th parallel. Pyongyang is set to again try to launch a long-range missle, probably on Dec. 17, the anniversary of Kim Jong-Il’s death and two days before the South Korean presidential election.
Maturity is less common in nations where threats are distant, and/or those where opportunities are scarce. Thus, as long as the Arab world’s economic and cultural decline continues, much of it will continue to believe that America is evil. And so on around the globe.
But when assessing America’s image in the world, remember that the hipsters who carry the most ardent anti-US messages are often as shallow as, well, the Gangnam crowd. They’ll soon turn into the older and wiser Psy.
Twitter: @bennyavni