I can say that as plainly as I can say that it had no McDonald’s (it arrived in 1988, in Gangnam, of course).
South Korea had no irony when I arrived there. Americans have told me that Asians have no irony in Europe, where I last lived, I was told that Americans have none. If you don’t think that irony is a measure of eliteness, think of how annoyed you were the last time you were accused of not having any. Thus “Gangnam Style” signals the emergence of irony in South Korea, meaning that the country has reached the final stage in any state’s evolution. First, one scrambles for wealth then one luxuriates in mocking the effeteness that comes with it. Irony is that special privilege of wealthy nations-Aristophanes, possibly the world’s first satirist, wrote his plays as Athens was becoming the dominant power in the region Cervantes wrote at the height of Spain’s naval wealth and Alexander Pope was born the year that England defeated the Spanish Armada. Being rich doesn’t mean we have to stop hanging out in parking garages.
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