Rapper's monster hit puts K-Pop in world spotlight

In the past few weeks, you would have had to have been hiding under a rock, or at least avoiding all encounters with the media, to have missed South Korean rapper Psy's hugely popular hit, Gangnam Style.

Approaching 400 million hits on YouTube, around six times South Korea's population, this ultracatchy tune has wormed its way into the hearts of tens of millions of fans worldwide.

The rest of the world's love-affair with Korean pop (K-Pop) culture had its roots in the 1990s, when TV output from South Korea, almost exclusively dramas, gained popularity in Japan, the Chinese-speaking world and, to a lesser extent, other parts of Southeast Asia.

In June of last year, a 7,000-seat section of Hong Kong's AsiaWorld Arena was packed with young Hong Kong K-Pop fans. It was the city's first large-scale, two-day concert headlined Girls in Love and Boys in Power, and featured eight leading K-Pop groups from Seoul.

K-Pop, led by fresh-faced young men and women's "idol" groups, is spearheading a completely new trend and introducing the world to this unique musical genre. This Korean Wave has now expanded to include music, film, video games and food.

For many across Asia, South Korean output, especially the TV shows, trumps Western series because it is more culturally relatable. But this theory may be losing credibility as, in the past few years, its influence has expanded far beyond Asia, with K-Pop concerts attracting fans in cities as culturally and geographically remote from South Korea as Paris.