SEOUL, July 10 (Korea Bizwire) — K-pop band BTS’ latest album “Map of the Soul: 7″ was the most-sold album in the United States in the first half of 2020, a global music sales measurement company said Friday. Nielsen Music’s U.S. Mid-Year Report for 2020 showed that “Map of the Soul: 7,” BTS’ fourth full-length [...]
SEOUL, July 9 (Korea Bizwire) — Kwon Min-ah, the 26-year-old former member of a K-pop girl group AOA, revealed last week that she has been harassed by former AOA leader Jimin for the last 10 years. Jimin, the 29-year-old rapper and singer whose real name is Shin Ji-min, was subject to massive criticism after threatening [...]
SEOUL, July 7 (Korea Bizwire) — From BLACKPINK and NCT 127 to GOT7, the K-pop industry as of late has seen a noticeable boost in diversity in respect to members’ nationalities and racial backgrounds. But still, the ethnic and regional makeup of international K-pop talents today is largely oriented towards East and Southeast Asia. All [...]
SEOUL, July 6 (Korea Bizwire) — Returning from a 14-month hiatus, BLACKPINK has shaken up the K-pop scene with its new single “How You Like That” and accompanying music video released in late June. The music video has set five new Guinness World Record titles, while the single has remained on top of most domestic [...]
SEOUL, July 6 (Korea Bizwire) — Amid the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to hamper the global music and entertainment industry-at-large, the K-pop scene has proven time and time again its resilience and nimbleness in audience outreach and commercial viability. BTS is estimated to have earned nearly US$20 million through its one-off virtual concert, “Bang Bang Con: [...]
SEOUL, July 1 (Korea Bizwire) — In the past several weeks, global fans of K-pop came under a sudden burst of collective observation by the international media, with a wave of positive coverage depicting K-pop fans as agents of change amid a series of high-profile cases of political activism related to the Black Lives Matter [...]
SEOUL, June 29 (Korea Bizwire) — Since her full-fledged solo departure from Wonder Girls in 2017, K-pop songstress Sunmi has taken on striking concepts of feminist empowerment in her summer tracks, from “Gashina” to “Noir.” For 2020, Sunmi is taking on a totally new facade: a woman hopelessly in love in the early days of [...]
SEOUL, June 29 (Korea Bizwire) — This year’s online edition of KCON, a major K-pop and Korean culture festival series held overseas every year, attracted 4 million viewers, far more than the combined number of visitors to the festival in the past eight years, according to its organizer Monday. Under this year’s banner theme “KCON:TACT [...]
SEOUL, June 26 (Korea Bizwire) — Members of K-pop girl group BLACKPINK said Friday they felt a deeper sense of responsibility when releasing their new song, “How You Like That.” “This may sound too lofty but we want to send out a positive and hopeful message through the new song,” BLACKPINK’s main singer Jisoo said [...]
SEOUL, June 23 (Korea Bizwire) — From the most casual to the most ravenous followers, the international K-pop fan community is as varied and nuanced as any ethnic group or nationality. Given the diverse demographics, any attempt to broadly define K-pop fandom is bound to end in futility. But on close observation, one common trait [...]