Student spin on the Korean dance craze reaches over 200,000 hits on YouTube in one week
Melissa Sundardas
News Editor
In a spontaneous attempt to lighten the mood on campus, York student David Kim paraded around in a suit, bow tie, and shades, dancing to “Gangnam Style,” a hit song by Korean pop star PSY, which now has approximately 350 million views on YouTube.
Kim, a fourth-year biology student, had his roommates film him busting out the signature “Gangnam Style” dance moves in the middle of several busy, familiar Keele campus spots, like Vari Hall, Scott Library, and York Lanes.
Kim and his friends were shocked to see that two days after uploading the video on YouTube, it had reached 90,000 views. A week later, the video stands at over 200,000 hits, with over 1,000 likes on YouTube.
“I just put [the link] up, and then my roommate said he couldn’t find it on YouTube, so I posted it on Facebook, and instantly, people were sharing and liking it,” says Kim, who was in Korea in July around the time “Gangnam Style” was released.
“There were thousands upon thousands of shares. I just did it
for fun, and I did for the laughs. Everybody knew it, and I just wanted to make people happy,”
he says.
The video was filmed on a rented video camera from Steacie library, and on Kim’s friends’ smartphones. Kim says he used his iPhone to play the song as he galloped around campus.
While many of the bystanders in the video did not have much of a reaction to Kim randomly dancing in front of them, a few did smile, stop to record him on their phones, and give him high-fives.
As Kim burst into a lecture hall and danced at the front of the class, the professor grooved along with him.
With all the unexpected attention he’s received since his video became a hit, including interviews and features on Breakfast Television, Kiss92.5, and Metro Morning, Kim says he wants to help out a charity while the spotlight is still on him.
“I felt like suddenly, I have all this attention, and I’m not doing anything with it, and I should be,” says Kim. He says he’d like to support cancer research because he has family members who have been affected by the disease.
In two weeks, Kim is planning to release a second “Gangnam Style” parody video, but this time, it will be set all over Toronto.
“Toronto’s caught the fever for it, so I think I’m going to do a generalized Toronto-wide video, but maybe in the long term, do some social experiments, which people will enjoy,” he says.
