BTS is currently on a tour that is projected to land in the top 10 highest grossing tour of all time, they are the most streamed group, not just most streamed korean group or asian group, most streamed group period. They don’t just sell out stadiums, they sell out cities, museums, books, laundry detergent, and shirts they wore for 7 seconds on camera for 6 digits.
BLACKPINK, Stray Kids, TWICE, Seventeen, Enhypen, TXT and other major acts have built touring businesses that stretch across continents. Million-selling albums, once extraordinary in Korean music, have become regular headlines. K-pop artists routinely appear on Billboard, luxury houses compete for idols as global ambassadors, and Korean entertainment companies now plan releases with audiences in Seoul, Tokyo, Los Angeles, London, Bangkok, Manila and São Paulo in mind.
From the outside, it can make K-pop look like an enormous success machine but a professor from of Sunshin Women’s University, Kim Jung-seop, analyzed all, and we mean all, boy and girl groups that debuted between 1996 and the end of 2025, beginning with H.O.T., whose 1996 debut is commonly associated with the beginning of Korea’s modern agency-planned idol system.
He determined that the success of the few, especially that of BTS, could make KPOP appear bigger but, in fact, only 42 of the 1,182 groups, or 3.55%, ever sold more than 300,000 copies of a single album. Professor Kim said that 300,000 is the break-even benchmark. Anything lower than that is a loss. And no, unless you are streaming billions, earnings from streaming won’t contribute much.
Now, if we talk about “stardom”, groups that became million sellers of a single album, Only 19 groups, or 1.61% managed to reach that level.
Put another way, across three decades of modern K-pop, roughly one out of every 62 idol groups managed to sell one million copies of a single album.
Go higher and the population almost disappears.
Just eight groups, or 0.68% of the entire sample, surpassed 10 million cumulative album sales: BTS, SEVENTEEN, Stray Kids, EXO, TWICE, NCT, TOMORROW X TOGETHER and ENHYPEN.
That is roughly one out of every 148 groups that debuted. And those are only album-sales thresholds.
Note that other charts include more groups in that 10-million-seller club. Chartmaster, for example, has 11 groups that have crossed 10 million in physical sales. Once we get the full study translated, we will clarify.
Taking the Research Further
Now, we are taking that research further. What happens if we ask how many of those 1,182 groups ever entered the Billboard Hot 100 or Billboard 200? How many charted in the UK? How many accumulated 10 billion Spotify streams, then 20 billion, 30 billion or 40 billion? How many have managed to do a legitimate stadium tour?
This will further highlight a major issue with the claims that KPOP has gone global. Kim suggests what happened isn’t necessarily globalization of Kpop, it’s that the road has been paved towards global penetration but kpop acts being able to trek through that road is another matter altogether.
BTS, despite their stature, cannot carry each group through the promise land. The groups, their management, and believe it or not, Korea itself have roles to play.
This is not to say that Kpop is exactly where it was 30 years ago. On the contrary, it has changed drastically.
The industry in which H.O.T. debuted in 1996 is not the industry in which a new group debuts in 2026. The costs are different, promotional environment, and the number of competitors is different. The markets available to Korean artists are different. Even the ways an idol can make money have multiplied dramatically.
That is why defining success in one definite finish line is unreasonable. There are groups that have become a major Korean household name and still build a profitable audience elsewhere. Another can become enormous in Japan without developing comparable demand in North America. Some can tour successfully across Asia but struggle to move enough tickets for a substantial European tour. A tiny number can sell arenas across several continents, and an even smaller number can build tours around stadiums.
So instead of simply asking which K-pop groups became successful, we wanted to ask something much harder:
- Out of 1,182 groups, what does “making it” in K-pop actually look like?
- What are the different levels of success?
We will look at it from the sales, streaming, touring, branding, and cultural, and artistic perspective.
Screw the 7-Year Curse, Look at the 3-Year Boss Level Problem
Fans have spent years talking about the so-called “seven-year curse,” the point at which many idol groups reach the end of their initial exclusive contracts and must decide whether to renew, renegotiate, leave their agencies or disband. That’s cute. Because the average K-pop group in Kim’s study lasted only 4.12 years.
That’s just 58.9% of a seven-year contract period. More strikingly, the study found that only 55.03% of idol groups survived for at least three years after debut.
That means roughly 45 out of every 100 K-pop groups were already gone, inactive or effectively disbanded before making it through their third year. Yeah, if a group ever faces the seven-year curse, consider them lucky.
Kim attributes this partly to the economics of the idol business. Agencies make substantial investments before and immediately after debut, and early market performance helps determine whether continuing to fund the group makes financial sense.
If album sales, fandom growth, performances and other revenue sources fail to develop sufficiently, an agency eventually faces a difficult calculation: keep investing in an act that may still break through, or redirect that money somewhere else.
A debut is closer to receiving permission to enter the race. The company still has to finance music, recording, choreography, styling, music videos, marketing, staff, transportation, accommodation and continued promotions. The artist has to attract enough attention in an extraordinarily crowded market to persuade the company that another comeback is worth funding.
For almost half of the groups in Kim’s 30-year dataset, that equation apparently stopped working within three years.
People ‘Like’ Girl Groups but Not as Much as Boy Groups
The average boy group in the study remained active for 5.11 years. The average girl group lasted only 3.13 years. That’s a difference of 1.98 years.
In percentage terms, the average boy group’s career was roughly 63% longer than the average girl group’s.
What makes that disparity particularly striking is that Korea did not produce dramatically more groups of one gender than the other during the period studied. Kim counted 594 boy groups and 588 girl groups, almost a perfect split.
Kim points to the historically different economics surrounding male and female idol fandoms.
Boy groups have generally been better positioned to develop highly committed fandoms willing to spend repeatedly on albums and other fan-oriented products.
Girl groups, particularly in earlier generations, often depended more heavily on broad public recognition, digital hits, events and mass-market popularity.
A large dedicated fandom can provide something extremely valuable to an entertainment company – consistent and predictable demand.
A casual listener may love a song without ever purchasing an album, concert ticket, light stick, membership or piece of merchandise. A committed fan can generate revenue repeatedly throughout the year.
What Made 1 Million Albums an Achieveable Goal?
g.o.d. Sold a million in 2001 but during the transition into downloads and digital music, million-selling releases became increasingly unusual.
EXO ended the drought with XOXO. Their repackaged album crossed one million copies in 2013. Their full-length albums continued crossing one million, and by 2018 the group had surpassed 10 million cumulative album sales, becoming the first Korean act that debuted after 2000 to reach that mark.
Then the scale of the market began changing again.
BTS’s Love Yourself: Her crossed one million copies in 2017, becoming the first album released since 2001 to surpass one million sales without counting a repackage. A year later, Love Yourself: Answer became the first Korean album in roughly two decades to exceed two million copies. BTS subsequently pushed the modern market past three million, four million and eventually five million copies for individual albums.
In 2018, BTS and EXO occupied the top three positions on Korea’s annual album chart, with BTS’s Love Yourself: Answer selling approximately 2.2 million copies, Love Yourself: Tear approximately 1.85 million, and EXO’s Don’t Mess Up My Tempo approximately 1.45 million. SEVENTEEN’s highest-selling release that year was still below 400,000 copies.
By 2020, SEVENTEEN had joined the million-selling tier. Their Heng EP sold more than one million copies, another indication that the ceiling was no longer reserved for BTS and EXO.
SEVENTEEN became a repeated multimillion seller. Stray Kids crossed the threshold and eventually moved into several-million-copy territory.
NCT and its units developed enormous physical sales. ENHYPEN, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, and ATEEZ became one.
Girl groups including BLACKPINK, TWICE, LE SSERAFIM, IVE, aespa, NewJeans and others demonstrated that seven-figure physical sales were no longer overwhelmingly confined to boy groups.
The change becomes especially obvious when looking at the number of individual million-selling releases appearing each year. Circle/Gaon data compiled from the annual charts shows just one million-selling album in 2017. By 2020 there were several. By 2021, the annual total had moved into double digits.
This is where Professor Kim’s description of a “post-BTS era” becomes much more interesting than a discussion about who sold the most albums.
BTS did not write SEVENTEEN’s songs, create Stray Kids’ fandom, build NCT’s fanbase or make ENHYPEN successful. Each group still had to create its own demand.
What changed was the demonstrated size of the opportunity.
BTS showed Korean entertainment companies, distributors, retailers, promoters and investors that the potential market for an idol group could extend dramatically beyond the traditional boundaries of Korea and East Asia.
Professor Kim’s own data revealed that of the eight groups in his study that eventually surpassed 10 million cumulative album sales, several reached their greatest commercial scale during the global expansion of K-pop that followed BTS’s breakthrough.
An industry’s ceiling is partly determined by consumer demand, but it is also determined by what companies believe is worth investing in.
If a Korean entertainment company believes an idol group’s realistic market consists primarily of Korea, Japan and parts of Asia, it will make one set of investment decisions. If it believes the same group could eventually sell albums in American retail stores, chart in the United States, tour North American and European arenas, sign global advertising campaigns and build millions of paying fans across continents, the potential return on that investment becomes much larger.
That is why asking whether another group became “as big as BTS” may be an exercise in futility. And as we go through this series, we will understand why.
The relevant question therefore is whether the number of groups capable of reaching previously exceptional levels of success increased after BTS market expanded.
Album sales strongly suggest that it did.
But album sales alone cannot tell us whether this was simply a Korean physical-sales boom or evidence of something much larger.
For that, we need to leave Korea.
If a genuine post-BTS expansion occurred, we should be able to see it in places where Korean entertainment companies could not manufacture success simply by selling more albums domestically.
We should see more Korean groups entering the world’s largest music markets. And that gives us a much harder test of Professor Kim’s “post-BTS era.”
What happened to K-pop on the Billboard charts before and after BTS?
Billboard 200: K-pop had reached America before BTS, but never stayed
The Billboard 200 chart measures the most popular albums in the United States using a combination of traditional album sales, track-equivalent albums and streaming-equivalent albums. It is therefore a substantially harder test than simply asking whether an album sold well in Korea.
K-pop was appearing on the Billboard 200 long before BTS became a global phenomenon.
BoA became the first Korean artist to enter the chart with her self-titled English-language album in 2009, peaking at No. 127.
BIGBANG followed with Alive in 2012 at No. 150.
Girls’ Generation’s TTS subunit entered with Twinkle the same year.
In 2014, 2NE1’s Crush reached No. 61,
Girls’ Generation’s Mr.Mr. reached No. 110 and
EXO-K’s Overdose reached No. 129. EXO subsequently entered as the full group with Exodus in 2015.
Then BTS arrived.
The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part 2 debuted at No. 171 in December 2015. Young Forever improved to No. 107 in 2016, followed by Wings at No. 26 later that year. By early 2017, You Never Walk Alone reached No. 61.
Then Love Yourself: Her dropped in September 2017 and reached No. 7.
That was a different level of penetration. BTS had become the first K-pop group to enter the Billboard 200 Top 10 and also the first group from what was then a small label, Big Hit Entertianment.
Observe that before BTS breakthrough, the list of Korean idol groups that had reached the Billboard 200 was remarkably short. Once obvious subunits are consolidated under their parent groups, it essentially consisted of:
- BIGBANG
- Girls’ Generation
- 2NE1
- EXO
Four groups. If we include the soloists, there will be 7 acts. BoA, G-Dragon and Taeyang.
Now look at what happened after BTS broke through.
BLACKPINK entered in 2018. NCT 127 followed later that year. TOMORROW X TOGETHER arrived in 2019, along with the project group SuperM. MONSTA X and TWICE entered in 2020. ITZY, ENHYPEN, SEVENTEEN, ATEEZ and aespa joined the chart in 2021. Stray Kids and LE SSERAFIM and (G)I-DLE followed in 2022.
Then the list accelerated again.
NMIXX, xikers, P1Harmony, NewJeans and BOYNEXTDOOR charted in 2023. ILLIT, Red Velvet, BABYMONSTER and Kep1er joined in 2024. ZEROBASEONE and CORTIS followed in 2025, while virtual idol group PLAVE entered in 2026.
Depending on whether project groups and virtual idols are included, and how units such as NCT 127 and NCT DREAM are counted, the exact total can move slightly. Using a conservative parent-group methodology, however, roughly 30-plus Korean idol groups have now reached the Billboard 200.
The important number for our argument is the direction of change. Before BTS’s major U.S. breakthrough, we can identify only about four parent idol groups that had reached the Billboard 200.
BTS blew up the wall and since then, more than two dozen additional idol groups have made their first appearance.
And reaching the chart itself eventually stopped being the ceiling.
BTS became the first K-pop act to top the Billboard 200 when Love Yourself: Tear debuted at No. 1 in 2018. SuperM followed with a No. 1 album in 2019. BLACKPINK eventually reached No. 1 with Born Pink. Stray Kids began an extraordinary run of No. 1 debuts. TXT, NewJeans, ATEEZ and TWICE also reached the summit.
By 2024, something happened that would have sounded bizarre during the earlier generations of K-pop: two K-pop girl groups occupied the Billboard 200 Top 10 simultaneously.
TWICE debuted at No. 1 with With YOU-th while LE SSERAFIM entered at No. 8. Billboard noted that it was the first time in nearly 20 years that two all-female groups of any genre had simultaneously occupied the American album chart’s Top 10.
In 2014, an EXO album reaching No. 129 or a Girls’ Generation album reaching No. 110 was newsworthy evidence that K-pop had an audience in America.
A decade later, Korean groups were competing for No. 1. That is a structural change.
Yes, BIGBANG, Girls’ Generation, 2NE1 and EXO had already demonstrated American demand. Earlier Korean artists had already toured the country, appeared on American television and attempted English-language releases. There’s something there.
What BTS changed was the amount and type of groups that could access the market.
And the Billboard 200 may actually be the easier test.
K-pop’s fandom-driven physical-album business is exceptionally well suited to an album chart. A sufficiently large and organized American fandom can produce substantial first-week album consumption even when the group’s individual songs receive relatively little U.S. radio airplay or mainstream streaming.
The Billboard Hot 100 is much less forgiving. And when we apply that test, the population collapses again.
Billboard Hot 100: fewer than 1% of K-pop groups ever made it
Professor Kim studied 1,182 K-pop idol groups that debuted over 30 years. As of 2026, only 10 Korean idol groups have placed a song on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 as credited group acts:
- Wonder Girls
- BTS
- BLACKPINK
- TWICE
- NewJeans
- FIFTY FIFTY
- Stray Kids
- LE SSERAFIM
- ILLIT
- ATEEZ
That means only approximately:
10 ÷ 1,182 = 0.85%
of the groups in Professor Kim’s historical population have achieved one of K-pop’s most recognizable American chart milestones.
Put another way:
Roughly 99.15% never did.
And even the 0.85% figure needs a qualification because Professor Kim’s dataset ends in 2025 while some chart achievements occurred afterward. We are using his 1,182 groups as a historical denominator to illustrate the scale of the achievement, rather than claiming a perfect probability model.
If you add soloists, which is excluded in Professor Kim’s research, the list will go up t 12 acts with Psy and CL, both were promoted by Scooter Braun but that’s another story.
What’s important for Professor Kim’s post-BTS study, look at the chronology.
Wonder Girls became the first Korean idol group to reach the Hot 100 in 2009 when the English version of “Nobody” peaked at No. 76.
And then? Nothing. For approximately eight years, no additional K-pop group joined them.
PSY famously exploded onto the Hot 100 with “Gangnam Style” in 2012 and reached No. 2, but like Wonder Girls, nothing happened for 5 years. Arguments may also be made that these two songs are novelty songs, much like Macarena. They are fun but not the kind of song that would make you follow an act.
CL entered billboard hot100 with LIFTED but it was a western project. Again, Braun played a pivotal role.
The next idol group to enter the Hot 100 and with a Korean-based project was BTS.
“DNA” debuted in 2017, giving BTS their first appearance on America’s principal singles chart. They followed with “MIC Drop,” and in 2018 “Fake Love” became the first K-pop group song to enter the Hot 100 Top 10.
BLACKPINK joined the chart later in 2018 when “DDU-DU DDU-DU” debuted at No. 55. Billboard later noted that it was, at the time, the highest-charting Hot 100 entry ever by a K-pop girl group.
Then the population began growing.
TWICE entered with “The Feels” in 2021.
NewJeans entered with “Ditto” in 2023.
FIFTY FIFTY followed with “Cupid.”
Stray Kids entered with “LALALALA.”
LE SSERAFIM joined in 2024 with “EASY,” becoming only the eighth K-pop group in history to reach the Hot 100 at that point.
ILLIT subsequently joined the list, and ATEEZ became another new entrant in 2025 when “Lemon Drop” reached No. 69.
By 2026, the change had progressed far enough that LE SSERAFIM and ILLIT could participate in a collaboration with KATSEYE that debuted at No. 38, giving both Korean groups a Top 40 Hot 100 record.
All members of BTS entered the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200. All Blackpink members have entered the Billboard Hot 100. However, only three, entered Billboard 200 with solo projects. Jisoo is yet to field an entry.
Taeyang solo Billboard Hot 100 entry is a collaboration with Jimin.
Now compare the two periods.
Before BTS entered the Hot 100:
1 K-pop idol group had done it and 2 solo artists – Wonder Girls, Psy and CL.
After BTS entered:
eight additional Korean idol groups eventually did plus 11 soloists, including Taeyang.
Professor Kim’s idea of a post-BTS era explains a lot more and is becoming more useful once it is fully established how BTS expanded the market and the industry. Before BTS’s breakthrough, Korean idol groups appearing on America’s major charts were extraordinary exceptions. Afterward, they remained rare—but they were no longer isolated exceptions.
The Billboard 200 tells us that many more Korean groups developed enough American consumption to chart albums.
The Hot 100 tells us something even more difficult happened: a growing number developed individual songs capable of competing on America’s primary singles chart.
And yet even after K-pop’s enormous global expansion, only around 0.85% of the 1,182 groups in Professor Kim’s study have ever reached the Hot 100 as groups.
That tells us two things at once.
K-pop’s global opportunity became dramatically larger.
And reaching its highest international levels remains brutally difficult.
But America is just one market. It may be the biggest market but it is still just one market. How about across the Atlantic?
Part 2 we will look into UK Official Charts and world tour.
