Generally speaking, the three Greatest Generals of All Time are considered to be Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte. In the ancient world Hannibal of Carthage was included, the Brits prefer to include Arthur Wellesley, the Russians prefer Alexander Suvorov or Georgi Zhukov, the Americans Dwight Eisenhower, the Germans Gebhard von Blucher or Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, and so fort.
3 Greatest Admirals of all time are Themistocles of Athens (who defeated the Persian navy at Salamis) Van Ruyter of Holland (who led Holland to a world power) and Horatio Nelson of Great Britain, although the Koreans prefer to put in Yi Sunsin(Lee Soonsin - the common Korean surname Lee is sometimes spelled Yi) and the Japanese Heihachiro Togo (Togo is the surname but he studied in UK so he put his surname like the Westerners did.)
There are arguments about who are the three greatest singers coming out from Korea for some time. In the older days there were figures who were active before 1980 who were ranked, like Na Hoonah (who debuted in late 1960s - like most details on his life, his debut year is kinda vague) whose "Bro Tes" was a hit in 2021 and briefly got attention of some i-fans.
However, modern consensus is such that since KPop didn't really got shaped on the way we know until 1980s, singers who were active before that should be excluded. Since few non-Koreans are going to be familiar with them, I won't talk about them.
Cho Yongpil, very powerful in 1980s, is always ranked. He also gained popularity in Japan, so he did contribute to KPop's expansion outside of Korea.
And the other two were Seo Taiji and BTS, the last obviously added recently.
However SeoTaeji's stars faded since he 'borrowed' freely from America - he was more of an importer than a real singer. He later did found his genre of alternative rock, but that is secondary.
There are several candidates for the third position
BoA, the first to get attention in Japan
H.O.T. the first modern idol group
Wonder Girls, who opened the modern age of KPop
Big Bang, whose force could not be resisted
Psy, who briefly held the world on his thumb
DBSK (not TVXQ) , who dominated Japan
BlackPink , whose international status as a celebrity cannot be questioned
IU, who undermined KPop, and actually outlasted BTS and out of these people mentioned above, she has had the longest peak from 2010 to 2021, 12 years and her style of personal Kpop, with easier style of listening, is now dominating 4th Generation
Of course, given my looooong history of writing about the singer who had traveled to Japan with Lee Jongsuk, you will probably think who I would choose, given her description above is the longest over there.
But who would you choose as one of the top three greatest figures of Korean Pop history of all time?
