Korean culture is undoubtedly conquering the world these days. From binge-watching Korean Dramas, following their fashion style, buying their cosmetic products, up to streaming their music, we are all crazy about them. However, their music industry is the one that gained the most attention worldwide. South Korea’s pop music or vernacularly known as ‘K-pop’ emerged during the 1990s and became the global mainstream today.
Blackpink is a K-pop girl band, with four powerful women members in the name of Jennie, Rosé, Jisoo, and Lisa. They became one of the biggest girl bands in the world in just four years. In their song ‘Forever Young’, there’s a popular line that says ‘Blackpink is the revolution’ and this is probably the truth. The group was the first-ever K-pop girl group to play at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, as well as being the first girl group to feature on Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 list. Blackpink broke multiple Guinness World Records with their single ‘How You Like that’, which had 86.3 Million views within the first day of its release. They have been into successful concerts, runway shows, and became faces of mega brands like Chanel, Puma, Louis Vuitton, and Dior. The way Blackpink performs, their fashionable outfits, personality, how they treated their fans, and their dedication to what they are doing, brought them in a meteoric rise. That’s why it is not surprising for them to have a big and supportive fandom. ‘Blink’ is the official fandom name of the Korean pop girl group. The word Blink is a combination of the words BL/ack and p/INK and the K-pop group themselves came up with this name. Blinks are supporting them with their concerts, albums, singles, merchandise, and brand promotions. Aside from that, this fandom is big and powerful enough to caught attention not only for supporting their idols but also in using their voice for social issues. In fact, they are one of the fandoms who rallied around the recent Black Lives Matter movement. They are using memes and videos with BLM hashtags to drown out those voices.
Talking about K-pop music, we couldn’t help ourselves to think of the well-known boy group, BTS. Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS), also known as Bangtan Boys is consists of seven members, the rappers RM, J-hope, Suga, and vocalists Jin, V, Jimin, and Jungkook. Some of BTS notable achievements are their online concert ‘Bang Bang Con: The Live’ achieved Guinness World Record title for most viewers for a music concert live stream; the ‘Black Swan reached number one in iTunes Chart in 103 countries; the first artist in history to achieve 20 number one’s on Billboard world digital song sales chart; their album ‘Map of the Soul: 7’ tops mid-year Oricon album sales chart; ‘Map of the Soul: 7’ was listed in best 50 albums of 2020; the ‘DNA’ music video reaches one billion views on Youtube; one of the 2020’s most impactful Asians in Gold House’s 2020 A100 list; BTS’ Map of the Soul: 7 got the highest first sales week in Hanteo History; the group holds 21 of the 25 spots on the world digital song sales chart; they are on the highest-charting song on Billboard Hot 100 Ever for a K-pop Group; Map of the Soul: 7 is the biggest U.S. debut of 2020; ‘ON’ music video broke Youtube premiere record; Map of the Soul: 7 is now the most pre-ordered South Korean album of all time; BTS is the first Korean group who performed at the Grammys; first foreign artists to play a solo stadium show in Saudi Arabia; they broke records on Tiktok; ‘Map of the Soul: Persona’ is the best-selling album in South Korea. These are just some of BTS’ greatest achievements, and they will continue their success in the industry for more years to come. Behind their global popularity are their loving fans who support them all the way on top. ARMY is the official fandom name stands for ‘Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth’. Besides Bighit Entertainment promotions and efforts, we could not deny that the army played a big role in their international stardom.
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