South of the border

Abstract

It's midwinter and the temperature barely rises above zero. The streets are icy but Seoul buzzes with a brisk energy. The culture has adapted heated ondol floors, steaming spicy hotpots and underground shopping malls. Psy, the chubby rapper (and currently the second-most famous South Korean in the world after Ban Ki Moon), meets me at every turn. He's grinning from the side of buses, trotting on giant TV screens and smugly immortalised on cardboard cutouts fronting shops all over the city. Spring is coming and so are tensions with North Korea, but in late January there's a Psy-induced buzz emanating from Gangnam, a glitzy precinct south of the Han River. Not long ago this area was mostly rice fields. Now Gangnam is being celebrated for its nouveau-riche aspirations in Psy's YouTube music video hit (1.5 billion views and climbing) 'Gangnam Style'. So I have left the palaces, wide boulevards, galleries and quaint tea shops of northern Seoul to see what all the fuss is about.