By the way....here's the rundown of the controversy. BTW....at the time PSY was a soldier in the South Korean Military.
In 2002, PSY participated in an anti-American concert after a U.S. military convoy struck and killed two 14-year-old South Korean schoolgirls during the Yangju highway incident. The soldiers involved in the incident were acquitted by U.S. military courts,[78] which fueled a significant amount of anti-American sentiment in South Korea. During his performance, PSY lifted up a model of an M2 Bradley IFV and smashed it against the stage.[79][80]
In 2004, the South Korean translator and Christian missionary Kim Sun-il was kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq after the South Korean government refused to reconsider sending its armed forces to support the Iraq War. Although initial protests were only directed towards the South Korean government and towards extremists in Iraq, anti-U.S. military protesters decided to seize the moment to trigger a much larger wave of anti-Americanism. During a concert, PSY admonished the Iraqi kidnappers, condemned South Korea's former president Roh Mu-hyun, and also sang along to lyrics of the song "Dear American" by South Korean rock band N.EX.T, who composed it to condemn the United States and its military for its role in the Iraq war.[81] Some of the anti-American lyrics sung by PSY included the following verses: "Kill those fucking Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives and those who ordered them to torture," and "Kill [the Yankees'] daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers / Kill them all slowly and painfully."[82][83] Although PSY's actions did not receive any significant international media coverage at that time, this changed after the media reported about it in early December 2012. On December 7, 2012, PSY issued an apology directed towards members of the U.S. military and to the American people for his "inflammatory and inappropriate" language, and expressed hope that the American public will accept his apology.[84]
Despite initial public outrage, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told the media that U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will attend PSY's performance at the Christmas in Washington charity concert as planned.[85] Other commentators defended PSY for his past actions, including The Guardian's American columnist Glenn Greenwald, who pointed out that PSY's scandal had generated much more public outrage and controversy as compared to the U.S. military's policy of identifying children under the influence of the Taliban in Afghanistan as a "potential threat", even though news reports of both incidents were published on the same day.[86] Although CNN's Jareen Imam noted that PSY's scandal might lead to the "end of Gangnam Style mania",[87] Time magazine's Nick Carbone asserted that it is "unlikely that these newly dug-up anecdotes will depose PSY from his king-like level of stardom".[88]
