'Psy, I am going to kill myself'

Please save me. I am going to the Han River today (to kill mysel)".

"I have invested all I had. Please save my family".

These messages were posted on the homepage of the enormously popular rap singer PSY (Korean name Park Jae-sang) which is usually covered with praises like "Gangnam Style is great" and "I am a big fan".

The postings started flooding on Oct. 16 when the share price of DI, a semiconductor testing equipment producer whose major shareholder is PSY's father Park Won-ho, began nosediving.

Owing to the father-son relationship, the share price jumped eight-fold in the past three months, following the immense popularity of PSY's Gangnam Style, a rap-style song performed with what is now called "horse dance", all over the world.

Until his sixth album containing Gangnam Style was released in early July, DI shares were trading at around 1,500 won ($1.4) but continued to soar and peaked at 13,100 won ($12) on Oct.1 5. However, it began nosediving by nearly daily limit for the next two consecutive days, closing at 9,500 won ($8.5), Oct. 17.

This was when complaints of losses resulting from investing in DI began to flood PSY's homepage.

However, others were more sympathetic. "Who asked him to invest in stock? PSY didn't tell him to buy his father's stock".

The value of theme stocks like DI's is not dependent on corporate performance. The company actually suffered a net loss of 3.5 billion won ($3 million) in the first half of the year but share prices skyrocketed nevertheless.

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