Psy Fidelity

Psy, born Park Jae-Sang, 35, is proof of the internet's power to democratise entertainment, showing us that anyone can make a fortune from riding an invisible horse. Here are a few things you may not know about the world's most famous psyberstar

HOW A BUSINESS SCHOOL DROPOUT AND EX-ARMY GUY BECAME A GLOBAL PHENOMENON

31 December 1977

Psy is born Park Jae-sang in the Gangnam district of Seoul, South Korea.

1993

Aged 15, the young Park watches footage of rock band Queen at their 1975 Wembley Stadium concert, where they performed Bohemian Rhapsody. Psy later says that this ignited his love of music.

1996-2000

Psy briefly attends a business studies course at Boston University, but drops out and buys musical instruments. He enrols at Berklee College of Music instead, where he learns about songwriting before returning to South Korea, without a degree, to forge a career as a singer.

2000

He makes his first appearance on Korean television after his dancing skills were noticed by a TV producer.

2001

He releases his debut album, Psy from the Psycho World!, and earns the nickname "The Bizarre Singer". The South Korean authorities pave the way for a controversial future for the young star, fining him for creating "inappropriate content".

2002

Undaunted by government intervention, Psy releases his second album Sa 2 and its successor, 3 Psy, in the same year. Sa 2 sparks complaints from authorities that it will negatively influence children, cementing Psy's reputation for controversy and eccentricity. However, 3 Psy marks his move into the mainstream, winning prizes at the Seoul Music Awards.

2006

Psy wastes no time releasing his fourth album, Sa Jib after a stint in South Korea's mandatory military service. This record wins national awards as well as prizes in Hong Kong. In the same year, he marries his girlfriend of three-and-a-half years, Yoo Hye Yeon. (They now have twin daughters.)

2007

Psy's pop-star activities cause the Korean State Prosecutors to accuse him of neglecting his work, and he is reinstated in the army in the rank of private first class. He serves as a signalman until 2009.

2010

Until now, Psy has been putting out his own records (his father was the executive chairman of large Korean manufacturer DI Corporation), but financial difficulty means that he has to sign to the YG Entertainment label. It's under their management that his fifth album, Psy Five is released, and with it the "obscene" lead track Right Now. Its lyric, "Life is like toxic alcohol" prompts the authorities to ban fans aged under 19 from listening to it. More awards follow.

January 2012

Psy kicks off what is to be a life-changing year with his first appearance on a foreign TV network. He joins other K-Pop acts to play and dance like Lady Gaga, in front of an 80000-strong Japanese crowd in Osaka. In a sentiment that sums up the next 12 months, he introduces himself with a sign saying: "I'm a famous singer well-known for driving the audience wild in Korea, but here, today, I'm just a little chubby newcomer."

July 2012

The predictably-named album Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1 is released, and with it, Gangnam Style. The track appears in the Daily Express and on CNN shortly after its release on July 15 and a viral sensation begins.

August 2012

Gangnam Style reaches number one on YouTube's most-viewed monthly chart, overtaking Justin Bieber and summer sensation Carly Rae Jepson, and tops the iTunes music-video chart the same day.

September 2012

Psy appears on New York's The Today Show, teaching the anchors how to do the dance, and on Saturday Night Live after celebrities take to Twitter to praise the song. The Gangnam district awards Psy with a plaque and names him honorary ambassador.

October 2012

Psy meets UN Secretary General - and fellow South Korean - Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Ban says he'd like to work with Psy because of his "unlimited global reach". Psy teaches Ban the dance.

November 2012

Psy speaks at Oxford University about the inspiration behind Gangnam Style and his next album. For the first time, the Oxford Union has to hold a ballot for tickets due to popular demand, even though previous speakers have included Michael Jackson and the Dalai Lama.

December 2012

Gangnam Style becomes the first video on YouTube to exceed 1 billion views. The Yale Book of Quotations names the song's refrain, "Oppan Gangnam Style" as one of the top quotes of the year. On his 35th birthday, Psy performs with MC Hammer in front of a global TV audience in Times Square, New York, to welcome in 2013.

April 2013

Psy releases his hotly anticipated Gangnam Style follow-up, Gentleman. - Alice Vincent © The Telegraph

WHAT IS PSY WORTH?

Nine months ago, an entertainer almost unknown outside his own country, South Korea, uploaded his horsing-around song, Gangnam Style.

 It became YouTube's most-watched video to date, with 1.5 billion views and counting. Gentleman, released on April 13, hit the 200-million mark in just nine days.

Psy's physical CD sales barely reached 100000 and he earned less than $60000 for online music sales in South Korea. But, according to public records, last year he made more than $8-million. How?

Psy and his agent, YG Entertainment, keep about half the revenue of ads that appear alongside his YouTube clips. Last year alone, this portion was estimated at around $1-million. On top of this, parodies of his song - of which there are tens of thousands - have to share their ad revenue or be removed from YouTube.

Legal downloads of his songs also make money. Apple's US iTunes Store sold Gangnam Style for $1.29. Multiply this by 3 million, the number of downloads at the end of 2012 - Psy and his handlers get 70%.

Psy's appearances on TV shows such as The X-Factor and various chat shows do not generate income, but his lending his happy face to advertising certainly does.

After Gangnam Style, he was asked to endorse electronic devices, noodles and other things, earning him an estimated $5-million. We can only guess how much more he will make with Gentleman. He's in the US right now, being worshipped at every turn of his nimble feet.

 Next he will tour Europe to promote the new single, and with every new fan comes the tinkle of fresh cash prospects.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that shares in YG Entertainment Inc were at their highest trading level in six months on the Korea Exchange.

The company's shares have risen by 41% this year, compared with a 13% gain in the Kosdaq. YG Entertainment's CEO Yang Hyun-suk is one of the richest people in South Korea's entertainment industry.

Psy appears to be that rare thing, a recession-proof asset. - Sources: Associated Press; Bloomberg; Celebritynetworth.com

10 Things you need to know about Korean Hip-hop

1. Those with limited knowledge (and, I dare say, a blinkered view) of Korean culture might imagine its hip-hop to be a squeaky clean version of the gritty US original.

And if a quick surf on YouTube might confirm this view as not far off the mark, those are precisely the qualities sent up to devastating effect in Psy's YouTube compositions.

2. Psy belongs simultaneously to the worlds of Korean hip-hop and K-pop, the country's all-conquering bubblegum genre, where girlish boys and plastic divas compete in a seamlessly regimented sci-fi, fetish fantasia of spikes, boots and plucked eyebrows.

Here the pop/hip-hop boundaries have become blurred to the extent that rap tends often to be associated with sugary ballads.

3. Pure rap meanwhile - a genre that has existed in Korea only since 1997 - is the intellectual end of Korean pop. While there's no shortage of third-hand gangster cliché, the prevailing tone is of existential yearning.

Videos are high-spec mini-dramas, with earnest student-types undergoing crises in implausibly well-maintained apartments. It's a world away from Gangnam Style's self-mocking, high-gloss foolery.

4. Seo Taiji, the androgynous, waif-like godfather of K-pop, changed the face of Korean music in the early '90s, introducing hip-hop elements along with everything from swingbeat to heavy metal. His own excursions into the genre range from boy-band fare to Linkin Park-style rap-rock.

5. The sheer vigour and discipline of Korean breakdancing have made the country an unstoppable force since it hit the international scene in the early 2000s. South Korean crews have been official world champions, winning every Battle of the Year tournament since 2009 with a style that incorporates moves from traditional dance and taekwondo martial arts.

6. The influence of traditional forms on Korea's underground alternative rap scene is far stronger than you'd imagine. Echoes of pansori, Korea's drum-backed traditional blues, can be detected, along with the rhythms of nongak, "farmer's music", whose accompanying dances are weirdly reminiscent of breakdancing.

7. Only a society as preoccupied with order and harmony as Korea could have come up with the idea of "compliment battles" to end freestyle-rap contests. Contestants are judged not only on technical skill but also on "sincerity of respect", after closing shows by praising their opponents' verbal ingenuity.

8. Yoon Mi Rae. Born Natasha Reid in Texas, of Korean and African-American parentage, this top female rapper is said to have brought an appealing earthiness to the brash, synthetic world of K-pop.

9. G-Dragon & TOP. With big quiffs and oriental bling, pretty-boy G-Dragon and his macho foil TOP emerged from boy-band Bigbang. Representing a pop-rap mainstream that is ever-expanding, they've even recorded a song in Japanese with Britain's Pixie Lott.

10. But is it hip-hop? Going on Gangnam Style, Psy is not only the best but also the least hip-hop of Korea's hip-hop artists. The chanted belligerence in the song has become such currency in global pop that it has lost any real link to the idioms of Compton and the Bronx. Gangnam is glorious Asian electro-pop backed by an inspired video with classic comic timing. Will K-pop end up influencing music in a significant way? Only time will tell. - Mark Hudson © The Telegraph