21. SoolJ feat. Suh Ga Young - "Waiting 4 U" (2011)
20. Shinee - "Lucifer" (2010)
19. TVXQ - "Doshite Kimi o Suki ni Natte Shimattandaro" (2008)
18. Wonder Girls - "Be My Baby" (2011)
17. IU - "Boo" (2009)
16. T-Ara - "Roly Poly" (2011)
15. Super Junior - "Sorry Sorry" (2009)
14. Kara - "Step" (2011)
13. Big Bang - "Bad Boy" (2012)
12. f(x) - "Nu Abo" (2010)
11. Girls Generation - "Run Devil Run" (2010)
10. E.via - "Pick Up! U!" (2010)
9. 2NE1 - "Ugly" (2011)
8. Norazo - "Curry" (2010)
7. GD&TOP - "High High" (2010)
6. BoA - "Eat You Up" (2008)
5. SNSD - "Gee" (2009)
4. Seo Taiji & Boys - "Nan Arayo (I Know)" (1992)
3. 2NE1 - "I Am the Best" (2011)
"I Am the Best" might've been the best single released on the planet in 2011, even if not for its apocalyptic/futuristic video that kicks off on a catwalk and escalates into straightjackets, train-track break-dancing, ice cream cone rabbit-ear hats, and devil-horned hairstyles well before the aluminum bats and machine guns come out so 2NE1 can smash and shoot up the place. The stomping title hook sounds like "Neh-guh-ché Challa-GAH"; other big nonsense hook is the machine-gunned "bum-ratta-TATTA ta-tatta tah-tah." Then there's the froggie-reggae dancehall ("hot-hot-hot-hot FI-ya") and Alice Cooper ("billion dollar baby") references. Lyric plot: Hitting the city, taking no ****. World-class throat: CL. C.E.
2. HyunA - "Bubble Pop!" (2011)
After opening with riffs out of Plastic Bertrand's Belgian bazooka-punk classic "Ca Plane Pour Moi," "Bubble Pop!" onomatopoeically fills its archetypal title's promise — 4minute member/Wonder Girls alumnus HyunA's flirty-coy "ooh-ooh oh-oh" breaths sound like bubbles popping, as do the beats until the insane and seemingly tacked-on electronic ("dubstep," some say) breakdown in the middle. Butts in the video bounce buoyantly and bubbliciously as well. So no wonder hep Western blogs embraced it, boosting it toward millions of YouTube views within days. In Korea, it was "banned" after it already hit. My three-year-old daughter still thinks it's about bursting bubble wrap. C.E.
1. H.O.T. - "Candy" (1996)
That loopy, light-headed intro melody; that bouncy, boomeranging chorus; reggae-informed, Smash Mouth-indebted, 8-bit-encrusted everything. Seo Taiji may have laid K-pop's foundation a few years earlier, but it was H.O.T., a boy band engineered in part by SM kingpin Lee Soo-Man, that ushered in the "idol" cult that's propelled Korean pop cultural product as far and wide as it's come in the past ten years. Without relying heavily on visuals (the theme park romance of its video is a gas, though) like every idol group it's spawned since, they delivered a Platonic ideal that made good on its title. D.B.
Deserves number 1 tbh 
