https://simg.donga.com/ugc/MLBPARK/Board/16/75/51/31/1675513156829.jpg
(images from that site is very hard to copy from)
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The Korea Central Daily, also called 'Joongang" (which means 'center'), surveyed all these yt views Jan 2022 - Jan 2023 and obtained such results
Rankings are the view rankings in K-O-R-E-A
15. SVT. Korean Views 169M . Global views 1.23B. Most watched in Japan ( K-O-R-E-A is the 2nd most watched country). Korean portion of views 13.7%
14. Twice. 177M, 2.76B. Most watched in Japan (4th in Korea- which means 2 other countries than K-O-R-E-A watched more of Twice videos). Korean portion 6.4%
13. Younha.180M, 250M. Most watched in Korea, KR portion 72%. Most of the foreign views would be Koreans living out of Korea and probably in Japan, where she still has some following remaining.
(unless otherwise noted, singers under this line had K-O-R-E-A as the country where their videos were watched the most time.)
12. Red Velvet, 182M, 837M. Korean portion 21.7%
11. Psy, 210M, 1.5B. 14%
10. Big Bang, 250M, 761M. 32.8%.
9. Taeyeon, 222M, 524M, 42.3%.
8. NewJeans, 232M, 665M. 34.8%.
7. aespa, 249M, 1.09B. 22.8%.
6. Gidle. 314M, 1.214B. 25.9%.
5. BlackPink, 326M, 7.02B. 4.6%. Most watched in India (which is a stand-in for China since India appears to be a favorite place for Chinese youtube watchers to put their VPN base). K-O-R-E-A only ranks 6th in the ranking of countries where the videos were most watched.
3. BTS, 352M, 7.97B. 4.4%. K-O-R-E-A is the 8th country in the most watched ranking. I have a lot, a loooot of things to say about this, but let's move on to the next in the rank
(2. Lim Youngwoong, 390M, 410M, no need to calculate. He is not part of the discussion)
1. IU,
449M, 990M.
Portion of K-O-R-E-A, 45.4%
Lee Jieun released a grand total of 0 new songs of her own, 2 collaboration (one with Jay Park, another with the music director of the Yoo Heeyeol show) , 1 appearance at Cannes and 1 scandal in the period covered.
Yet the K-O-R-E-A-N-S swallowed Lee Jieun more than it did to BTS and even Lim Youngwoong.
I am actually surprised that Lee Jieun actually managed to obtain more than 500M views outside of K-O-R-E-A.
Also I am quite getting concerned about the dependence of girl groups in K-O-R-E-A. That is unhealthy.
K-O-R-E-A is like a heavy iron ball chained to prisoners' ankles in the old days. Not much to gain, all liability.
BTS failed to cut K-O-R-E-A from themselves and now its empire is collapsing. Unfortunately, its ultimate nemesis NewJeans also shows signs of being too dependent upon K-O-R-E-A because of the ambition of Min Heejin.
If K-O-R-E-A had not been that prominent, a domesticist like IU would NEVER have had the chance to compete against BTS and other international powerhouses. But she being dominant in K-O-R-E-A gave her a probably undeserving amount of power which significantly hurt KPop in the end, yet the K-O-R-E-A-N-S have not been weaned from her to this day, despite of her tendency to create scandals with the most bizarre collection of men you can imagine.
