SEOUL: PSY’s “Gangnam Style” video was galloping towards the one-billion-view mark on YouTube on Friday, a fresh milestone in the enduring global craze for the South Korean rapper and his horse-riding dance.

On Friday morning, the view counter attached to “Gangnam Style,” which was only posted on the video-sharing site in mid-July, stood at 995.8 million and counting.

PSY has swept all before him in the past five months, hovering up awards and scoring guest appearances with everyone from Madonna to the head of the United Nations.

Bieber’s effort was still in second place on Friday with more than 812 million views.

Although its imminent demise has been predicted many times, the PSY phenomenon has simply refused to die.

The quirky star, whose real name is Park Jae-Sang, has won adulation in his homeland for the global hit and was this month awarded one of South Korea’s highest cultural honours, the Okgwan Order of Cultural Merit. —AFP