Psy performs Gentleman during his concert Happening in Seoul last Saturday. Photo: Reuters/YG Entertainment

South Korean rapper Psy’s new video, Gentleman, rocketed up the You Tube heights with more than 82 million views on Tuesday, chasing the success of his megahit Gangnam Style after smashing the previous record for first-day views for songs.

Gangnam Style, which holds the You Tube record for most views ever with more than 1.5 billion, made the corpulent Korean a global star and one of the best-known faces to come out of the growing K-pop music scene.

The video to Gentleman racked up more than 20 million hits in the first 24 hours after its release on Saturday night.

That easily outstripped the eight million views for Justin Bieber’s Boyfriend in its first 24 hours.

“51 million views in 40 hours!! My God!!” Psy tweeted on Monday.

He is good. I love his energy

The song was also climbing music charts around the world, hitting eighth in Britain and seventh in Australia, according to the Apple store’s iTunes ranking, and holding top place in most of Scandinavia. It ranked 21st for songs overall, compared with 90th place on Saturday before the video was released.

“He is good. I love his energy,” one woman commented on You Tube. Others said the video was hilarious and the sunglass-wearing 35-year-old’s dancing “smooth”.

Some were less complimentary, with a few saying the video was arrogant and “too sexual”.

It shows Psy playing tricks on women such as splashing coffee in their faces and untying a bikini top.

“Meh. Gangnam Style was better,” one woman wrote.

Gangnam Style racked up digital sales of 3.59 million units in the US and Canada last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan and Nielsen BDS, ninth in the bestselling list. It was third on Amazon’s MP3 song bestseller list for 2012.