A summary of the news, current and upcoming comebacks, charts and music show wins, and more!
NOTE: Except in special cases, the news recapped in these posts will refer to K-pop only. K-dramas, variety shows, and other forms of entertainment will only be mentioned if there is an idol or idol group involved.
News to Note
- There’s going to be a lot more competition among the rookies this year: Big Hit’s new group TXT finished introducing all their members, YG’s Treasure Box revealed the lineup of their newest boy group Treasure, and JYP started teasing their latest girl group ITZY!
- PSY (of “Gangnam Style” fame) established his own entertainment agency P Nation after leaving YG Entertainment. He revealed that rapper Jessi is his first signed artist, and recruited HyunA and E’Dawn over the weekend.
- The Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA) has promoted several idol songwriters/composers from part time to full time members (BTS‘s Suga became a member last year). Idols on the list include Junhyung (Highlight), Yonghwa (CNBLUE), ZICO, Jinyoung (B1A4), Woozi (SEVENTEEN), and B.I (iKON).
- The first celebrity couple of 2019 ended up being short lived: SM Entertainment confirmed that EXO‘s Kai and BLACKPINK‘s Jennie have broken up in order to focus on their careers.
- This isn’t really news, but I still find it funny: BTS’s Jungkook answered a fan’s question about which fabric softener he uses, causing an unexpected shortage of Downy as ARMYs rushed to buy it.
NOTE: All of the linked articles above are from Soompi.
This Week’s Debuts and Comebacks
- SEVENTEEN, “Home” / You Made My Dawn
- *DEBUT* Cherry Bullet, “Q&A” / Let’s Play Cherry Bullet
- *SOLO DEBUT* Roh Taehyun (HOTSHOT), “I Wanna Know” / BiRTHday
- IMFACT, “Only U” (digital single)
Coming Up Next Week
| Monday (1/28) | Tuesday (1/29) | Wednesday (1/30) | Thursday (1/31) | Friday (2/1) |
| *CLC |
This Week’s Music Show Wins
| The Show (SBS MTV) | GFriend, “Sunrise” (1st Win) |
| Show Champion (MBC) | GFriend, “Sunrise” (2nd Win) |
| M! Countdown (MNET) | GFriend, “Sunrise” (3rd Win) |
| Music Bank (KBS) | GFriend, “Sunrise” (4th Win) |
| Music Core (MBC) | GFriend, “Sunrise” (5th Win) |
| Inkigayo (SBS) | GFriend, “Sunrise” (6th Win) |
Congratulations to GFriend for sweeping all the awards shows this week!!!
Awards Shows
The 8th Gaon Chart Music Awards took place on January 23. This awards show is a little different because they give prizes purely based on Gaon Chart data, awarding the top song of each month (digital) and best album sales of each quarter (physical). The winners of those categories were as follows:
Artist of the Year – Digital
| January | iKON, “Love Scenario” |
| February | Roy Kim, “Only Then” |
| March | Big Bang, “Flower Road” |
| April | TWICE, “What is Love?” |
| May | Bolbbalgan4, “Travel” |
| June | BLACKPINK, “Ddu Du Ddu Du” and “Forever Young” |
| July | TWICE, “Dance the Night Away” |
| August | Red Velvet, “Power Up” |
| September | Im Chang Jung, “There Hasn’t Been a Day I Haven’t Loved You” |
| October | IU, “BBIBBI” |
| November | Jennie (BLACKPINK), “SOLO” |
The December winner will be announced at next year’s ceremony.
Artist of the Year – Physical
| First Quarter | Wanna One |
| Second Quarter | BTS |
| Third Quarter | BTS |
| Fourth Quarter | EXO |
You can see a full list of award winners here.
Album Sales, Streaming, and Charting
Gaon Chart
*NOTE: Listing all the collaborators for the song “DDING” is messing up the table, so I used their initials below and then put their full names here – Jvcki Wai, Young B, Osshun Gum, and Han Yo Han
| Physical Sales | Digital Sales | Download | Streaming | Social | |
| 1 | ASTRO All Night | MC the Max “After You’ve Gone” | GFriend “Sunrise” | MC the Max “After You’ve Gone” | GFriend “Sunrise” |
| 2 | GFriend Time for Us | Chungha “Gotta Go” | JW, YB, OG, HYH “DDING”* | Chungha “Gotta Go” | BTS “DNA” |
| 3 | Minhyuk (BTOB) HUTA | JW, YB, OG, HYH “DDING”* | Chungha “Gotta Go” | Ben “180 Degrees” | BTS “IDOL” |
| 4 | g.o.d Then and Now | Ben “180 Degrees” | Paul Kim “Green Light” | JW, YB, OG, HYH “DDING”* | BTS “Fake Love” |
| 5 | BTS Love Yourself: Answer | Jennie (BLACKPINK) “SOLO” | MC the Max “After You’ve Gone” | Haeun “Shin Yong Jae” | TWICE “Yes or Yes” |
NOTE: Gaon‘s weekly charts reflect the previous week.
The International Side of K-pop
- K-pop in the TOP 10 of Billboard‘s World Album Chart:
- BTS still holds the Top 3 spots with the Love Yourself trilogy: Answer (#1), Her (#2), and Tear (#3)
- #4: EXO (Don’t Mess Up My Tempo)
- #5: Ateez (Treasure EP.2: Zero to One)
- #6: ASTRO (All Night)
- #8: BTS (Face Yourself – Japanese album)
- #9: EXO’s Lay (NAMANANA)
- BTS was listed as #9 in the New York Post‘s list of “Top 10 Boy Bands of All Time,” the only South Korean group to be featured.
Notable Variety Shows Featuring K-pop Idols
| Idol Room Guest | Weekly Idol Guest | Knowing Brothers /Ask us Anything Guest | |
| This Week | SEVENTEEN | Luna (f(x)) Minhyuk (BTOB) | (non-idol guests) |
| Next Week | None | CLC | (non-idol guests) |
This Past Week
- MON 1/21 / EXO Travel the Ladder Season 2 / Oksusu / EXO’s travel reality show featuring the members traveling to Taiwan and making all their decisions by using the ladder game. (EXO-CBX did this last year.)
Coming Up Next Week
- TUE 1/29 | WINNER Vacation – Hoony Tour | Olleh TV (mobile app) | WINNER’s new travel reality show featuring member Seunghoon guiding the others around Jeju Island.
*SOURCES NOTE: I get my news from a mix of sources, and all of them report the same information and sometimes cite each other as well. So rather than linking the exact article for each and every news item (unless the article provides a lot more detail), I will cite my general news sources below. Each of them will most likely have an article and/or tweet providing more details on the item in question.
MY REGULAR NEWS SOURCES: Soompi, Omona They Didn’t (Livejournal), mes #TeamPinky (Twitter @OH_mes), The Seoul Story (Twitter @theseoulstory), Girl Group Zone! (Twitter @girlgroupzone)
FEATURED IMAGE SOURCE: ITZY’s Twitter account (@ITZYofficial)
VIDEO SOURCES: FNC Entertainment (Cherry Bullet), Pledis Entertainment (SEVENTEEN), Star Crew Entertainment (Roh Taehyun), Star Empire Entertaiment (IMFACT) / Cherry Bullet’s MV also distributed by 1theK. / IMFACT’s MV is distributed by Genie Music.
OTHER SOURCES: Wikipedia, Billboard, Gaon Chart, Twitter (@GFRDofficial), New York Post, KBS, MBC, MNET, SBS
Katherine Does K-POP 