South Korea’s COEX mall has celebrated the country’s most famous musical export psy, with a statue replicating the dance featured in hit single ‘Gangnam Style’.
COEX is located in the luxurious district of Gangnam, Seoul, a fashionable and pricey business area south of the city’s Han River that is famed for its designer labels and plush offices. The mall itself also features a museum in honour of kimchi, a fermented foodstuff that’s become a symbol of the Korean peninsula.
Gangnam Style’s video remains the most viewed video on YouTube, with a total approaching 2.5billion views since it was launched in July 2012. That total is almost double Taylor Swift’s ‘Blank Space’, which is currently the second most-viewed YouTube video. The track parodies the district of Gangnam, implying that the style of the people who spend time there is largely a front, and often backed by a far less glamorous reality.
Part of the video for Gangnam Style was filmed at the COEX Mall, and plans include that the statue will play Gangnam Style around the clock for visiting tourists. The Korean government hopes that the statue will become a landmark in the area.
The statue is yet to be unveiled to the public, but can be viewed as a computer- generated image in front of the shopping centre via Twitter, below:
El Gangnam Style de PSY tendrá su propia escultura en el COEX https://t.co/kSi1591OCc pic.twitter.com/t0FnKy14ek
— Alvaro 알바로 ?? #ConIglesiasNo (@alvariteus) November 6, 2015
Psy, meanwhile, recently announced a new album, which is due out in December. ‘Gangnam Style’ is taken from the singer’s sixth record, an EP that was released in 2012. The new record will mark his seventh release, with albums dating back to 2001 and broken by South Korea’s compulsory military service.
At 2013’s NME Awards, Psy was nominated for both ‘Villain of the Year’, and ‘Best Dancefloor Anthem’.