It's a popularity poll, not a "I've heard of this person" poll.
its a survey asking people visiting korea what the top 3 artists that comes mind are, not who their single favourite artist is. So a bts fan might very well say bts, jungkoog and IU. A blackpink fan might say blackpink, iu and gdragon etc. And the older the person is the more likely they are to mention psy, gdragon or IU just because of how long they have been around.
And still, IU consistently ranks top 10 in most of these list be it surveys or direct data search data from youtube and google etc. That IU isnt known or not popular overseas havent been true since 2017.
