The original music video of the most iconic K-pop song was unavailable on YouTube for several hours.
On Monday, fans of Girls' Generation woke up to discover that the music video for the group's iconic song "Gee" was no longer available on YouTube, which is owned by Google. The video is one of numerous Asian music videos that have gone missing from YouTube due to new policies related to YouTube's for-pay system, YouTube Red.
Within a few hours, the video was returned, with its original view count, to the website.
"Gee" is the fourth most popular Korean music video in the world and has close to 150 million views.
The original version of "Gee" was unavailable "due to a copyright claim by YouTube."
The original "Gee" video was uploaded to a YouTube account previously used by Girls' Generation's company SM Entertainment, SMENT, but is no longer in use; the company now uses the official SMTOWN account for videos. The same video was uploaded to the SMTOWN account in 2011, but has less than 900,000 views.
The original, 2009 version "Gee" from YouTube, Girls' Generation's music video was the most popular Korean music video after three songs by Psy, including "Gangnam Style."
The Japanese version of "Gee" was still available on YouTube, since it was uploaded by the newer account. As of Nov. 9, it had more than 3.9 million views.
In 2009, "Gee" created a Girls' Generation craze and swept up music charts and awards, launching Girls' Generation to immense stardom. The SM Entertainment act is currently South Korea's most popular girl group.
Girls' Generation's rise to fame came largely in part thanks to the invention of YouTube, where fans were able to find the group's music videos, including their now-representative hit, "Gee."
In 2013, the girl group won the top award at the first YouTube Music Awards for their song "I Got A Boy."
That same year, "Gee" achieved over 100 million views on YouTube.
Girls' Generation released their album "Lion Heart" in August.
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Tamar Herman is a multi-media journalist and the co-founder of KultScene. She is a freelance writer and copy editor, and has written for MTV Iggy, Noisey, and Paste Magazine.
