Pop that! Korean "breakdance boys" take on the world

By Keiron Henderson

SEOUL, April 24 (Reuters Life!) - Break dancing, the athletic high-energy street dance, is a uniquely U.S. phenomenon and the best break dancers or B-boys and B-girls are American, right?

Wrong.

Young South Koreans have taken to break dancing with the same sort of passion that their parents devoted to building Asia's third largest economy and now regularly win B-boy dance competitions, beating U.S. and European rivals at their own game.

Break dancing sprang from the streets of urban America in the late 1970s building over the years into an international youth movement with a number of strands including dance, rapping, graffiti and music sets played by DJs.

Affluent Seoul is a long way from the mean streets of the Bronx, but the urban style of dancing started to take off in South Korea's biggest city due to girl and boy bands who imitated the dance moves of top artists in the United States.

South Korea's vibrant club scene fed the frenzy as dancers tried to outdo each other. What had once been a subculture in South Korea quickly became mainstream with B-boys and B-girls appearing on prime time TV shows and commercials for banks.

People involved in Korean B-boying say the dance part of the culture has had such an impact in South Korea because it appeals to a long-standing and widely acknowledged element of the national identity -- the love of a party.

"Korean people love singing and dancing. We have a long culture of dancing. Koreans are born with a dancing rhythm. It makes the B-boy culture very attractive to us," says Dean Kim, Managing Director of B-boy events organizing company G-Corp.