When Psy first came up in America, it was something that Americans weren't used to. Americans were not used to having a foreign artist compete against in their own markets. K-Pop has been a huge success in Asia, despite the small size of the country.

How does K-Pop do it? Their success comes from being industrial. All idol members are trained to dance, sing and dress a certain way. The New Yorker put it as, "a factory-like system whereby everything from the composer nationality to eye shadow color to hand gestures is pre-determined by formula and protocol." They also say that "cultural technology" is "too robotic to make it in the West."

How is it that Psy's "Gangnam Style," which was produced and written by the artist himself, was so successful in the U.S.?

It may have something to do with Korea's "economic miracle." In just a few decades, South Korea became a wealthy democracy, which was then able to support the huge music industry.

In short, K-Pop emerged during the time of MTV and YouTube while American music was developed during the time of radio and phonographs.

In Korea, new songs made their debut on screen while in America, it was on the radio. That meant that Koreans first started listening to music through their TV's, meaning that they 'watched' their music. 

With this, Korean music companies used TV to introduce their artists. With the start of YouTube, K-Pop was already ready to go global. 

An official stated, "Korea is one of the most wired countries in the world. Korea was already so developed that they perfected the use of YouTube. They received tons of views from all over the world."

"Gangnam Style" became so popular because it is a video-oriented video more than anything else. The song was first caught on because of the video and not the song. The hilarious video that showed satirical silliness was something Americans were not used to. Because it was first treated as a viral video rather than a song, which was how it started to succeed in the U.S.