Psy to hold press conference on Tuesday in Seoul to talk about his success in the U.S., future plans


Korean pop singer Psy has broken the Guinness World Record with his smash hit “Gangnam Style.”

Guinness World Records has named his music video the most “liked” in history, earning over 2,295,231 “likes” on YouTube as of Saturday.

“Having been the ‘have you seen this?’ video of the last two months across the web, it’s great to be able to award a record for this tremendously popular video,” said Dan Barrett, community manager for Guinness World Records, in a statement.

Before “Gangnam Style,” LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” was the most liked video with 1,576,578 likes, ahead of Justin Bieber’s “Baby” with 1,328,914 likes and Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” with 1,247,030 likes.

“In years past, it was unthinkable that something would be viewed a hundred million times, and now ‘Gangnam Style’ has achieved more than twice this figure in just three months on YouTube,” Barrett said. The video has 230 million YouTube views and counting.

The music video that features a horse-trotting dance was posted on July 15 and went viral all over the world, including the U.S., the world’s biggest music market.

Psy, whose real name is Park Jae-sang, signed with Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun and made several appearances on U.S. TV channels including MTV, NBC and CNN.

Even North Korea posted a video parody of Psy’s globally popular “Gangnam Style” on its official Uriminzokkiri website.

Over the weekend, the 34-year-old singer performed on the same stage with A-list stars for “iHeart Radio Music Festival 2012” held in Las Vegas. The list of global pop stars appearing at the show included Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Pink, Bon Jovi, Lil Wayne, Green Day, No Doubt, Pitbull, Linkin Park and Usher who had a private lesson for Psy’s horse-riding dance.

As Psy continued to gain momentum in America, Korean audiences haven’t a chance to see him on stage at home recently, except for a pre-recorded episode of “Super Star K” where he serves as a judge along with Yoon Mi-rae and Lee Seung-chul.

However, the good news is that Psy is returning to Korea this week.

He will hold a news conference on Tuesday afternoon in Seoul to talk about his tremendous success in the U.S. and his future plans, his agency YG Entertainment said on Saturday.

He is also likely to appear on a few TV shows and perform for some concerts and festivals he signed on for before he became an international star.

According to a festival organizing committee for Seowon University in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, Psy will perform four of his songs at the school’s annual festival on Wednesday evening.

The festival organizers booked Psy in July before he grabbed international attention and decided to go to the U.S. to test the popularity of the song himself.

“We were lucky enough to have Psy for our festival. We just contacted his agency (in July) because he had a great show two years ago at our school,” a student organizer was quoted as saying by Yonhap News agency on Sunday.

By Cho Chung-un  (christory@heraldcorp.com)