Throughout the years, South Korean entertainment has broken records and held the title of being "the first" in different areas. Despite the country's accomplishments, native English speakers are still hesitant to indulge in foreign entertainment. There has even been a lot of negative comments about this year's Best Picture at the Academy Awards being a foreign film...with no good reason for complaints.
In follow-up to the recent Oscars being awarded to South Korea, here are a few major achievements South Korea has made in the past decade:
The First YouTube Video to Reach 1 Billion Views
Everyone remembers this. Unless you live under a rock, you contributed a view or two to Gangnam Style by PSY, the first video on YouTube to reach 1 billion views on December 21, 2012.
While everyone outside of South Korea sees PSY as a "meme", or just a weird dude who made a weird music video, PSY is actually a legend in South Korea. Gangnam Style was on PSY's sixth album. He had been popular for many years before he went viral.
A few of his songs that pre-date Gangnam Style are so popular that basically anyone in Korea can sing along to all the words. This one is called It's Art:
The Most Viewed YouTube Video in the First 24 Hours
This record changes all of the time....and pretty often by someone in South Korea. PSY held this record when when his music video for Gentleman was released, and other k-pop groups such as BLACKPINK and TWICE have also held the record at some point.
The current holder of this record is BTS, who is no doubt the most popular k-pop group in the world right now.
The record has been held since March of 2019, when BTS released the music video for Boy With Luv. The video got 74.6 million views in the first 24 hours, and no one has beat it yet.
This is a comeback trailer for a new album and music video that BTS will be releasing just next week...do you think they'll beat their own record? Probably!
The First Non-English Film to Win Best Picture at the Oscars
Yep, the 92nd Academy Awards was one for the history books! The South Korean movie Parasite is now the first non-English film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. But that wasn't its only award...it also won Best International Film, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director.
The director himself, Bong Joon Ho, now has four Oscars under his belt...all won in a single night. The last time someone won four Oscars in one night was Walt Disney back in 1954.
Watch the trailer for Parasite, and be sure to go see this year's Best Picture in the theater!
With Parasite's sweep at the 2020 Oscars, South Korea has yet again proven their relevance in the entertainment industry. Because of the benefits of foreign entertainment, I hope that these accomplishments and the accomplishments and others will open the doorway for foreign films to be more common in the United States.
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