Ten years after “Gangnam Style” became a global phenomenon, South Korean rapper Psy is living his best life proud of his “greatest trophy” and free from the pressure of repeating that unprecedented success.
Uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2012, the song’s wacky music video became a runaway megahit, with its trademark horse-riding dance spawning thousands of imitations, spoofs and spinoffs.
It was the first YouTube video to reach one billion views, and with it Psy attained what K-pop acts before him could not: global recognition.
At the peak of the song’s popularity, he was everywhere sharing the stage with Madonna,
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has threatened Seoul with fiery destruction, but as a remote graveyard on a resort island shows, he has closer links to the South than he might like to admit.
At a cemetery in a hard-to-find corner of South Korea’s Jeju island, there are 13 tombstones bearing the Ko family name Kim’s relatives through his mother, Ko Yong-hui.
Jong-un is the third member of the Kim family to rule North Korea, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather what official hagiography calls the “Paektu bloodline.”
But the Jeju graves tell a wider story.
Kim’s mother was