On Nov 14, Korea had its annual university entrance exam.
Every year idols sometimes record clips to encourage their fans to do well in these tests.
The views of such clips kind of tell how popular an act is among Koreans who are around 18 years old, who are the average age cohort tho takes such exams (those who fail can take as many as they can in subsequent years but they do not form the majority)
Only clips having to do with Korean Pop will be counted.
(All figures as of the time of writing)
NewJeans 310k
IU 138k
Seventeen 125k
IVE 67k
LeSserafim 59k
Izna 53k
Ateez 47k
Fromis 9 44k
Illit 42k
NMixx 39k
ZB1 37k
Plave 37k
Itzy35k
TWS 27k
Kiss of Life 21k
Choi Yena 21k
Monsta X 19k
Chuu 19k
Jo Yuri 17k
Unis 17k
The Boyz 17k
The current iteration of fifty fifty 16k
Kim Jaejoong 16k
Viviz, Mamamoo, WJSN, BtoB, Say My Name (Jaejoong's new group) - above 10k.
(For whatever reason, aespa does not record such clips.)
===
The figures do not lie.
Among the 18 years olds of Korea, the most popular act is New Jeans.
But #2 is very surprising - someone who debuted on 2008,when most of the test takers were born around 2006, is #2, above everyone else!
The former owner of Edam Entertainment has recorded a message from 2008, when she just had debuted.
She recorded it in 2009 and 2011.
She probably recorded it in 2012, but since virtually every male in South Korea was fuming because of her most famous photo with anchovy, her presence would have been more annoying than encouraging so not released.
She recorded it on 2013 and 2014, didn't on 2015 and 2016,
but has done it since 2017, every year (there are 2 2019s, and one of them was done in 2018)
So, among the fans of the former owner of Edam Entertainment, it has kind of become a season's greeting, so even though she is now getting quite older than those who are taking the test , she is continuing to record such messages.
And the KPop acts who debuted subsequently have a hard time overcoming someone who debuted in the 2nd Generation, showing how far they have to go in order to unseat her in Korea at least.
Most recent BTS clip of such - 2022, 2.7M
