 "North Korea's vicious sense of humour: Pyongyang style")
Gangnam style is literally everywhere. US marines sing it. Ellen de Generes made PSY teach her (and Britney Spears) the dance, and with 2.1 million “likes,” it just unseated LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem, as the most ’liked’ video on YouTube.
The video has now been viewed over 220 million times on YouTube since it debuted online on 15 July. So no new Gangnam style news was bound to surprise us. Until North Korea got in on the act that is.
On 19 September, North Korea uploaded a video with the title I’m Yushin style! onto its government website Uriminzokkiri. The video shows a photo-shopped image of South Korea’s ruling conservative party presidential candidate Park Geun-hye doing the ‘horse-riding dance’ which has helped make PSY’s video so popular.
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Screengrab from YouTube[/caption]
It mocks Park as a devoted admirer of the “Yushin” system of autocratic rule set up by her father, Park Chung-Hee, after he seized power in South Korea in a 1961 military coup.
According to AFP, the implied message is a sensitive one, with Park under pressure to denounce the excesses of her father’s 18-year rule, which laid the foundations for the country’s economic rise but was also marked by systematic human rights abuses.
The video is full of pop up banners and slogans, including one that reads, “Don’t say the Yushin era was hell, it helped the chaebols”. This is reportedly a reference to the giant family-run conglomerates that have dominated the South Korean economy for decades.
But if you were expecting the video to feature the catchy beats of PSY’s song, be prepared to be very disappointed. Instead, the video features a tune identified by the Star Tribune as Big Noise from Winnetka - the Mancini version.
Indian Express is reasonably impressed by the North Korean tactic to latch on to popular Internet culture, asking if this video could bode a change of heart for the North Korean regime.
However, Star Tribune is not as gracious . “These guys have always been bad at propaganda. This is awful”, they said.
Watch the bizarre video below: