Katherine’s K-Pop Recap: August 2-8, 2021

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

Starting on August 9th, Melon’s 24Hits and Recent 24Hits charts will be changed to the new TOP100 and Recents charts. The TOP100 chart will be on both data from the past 24 hours and from the past hour – except from 1:00 A.M. to 7:00 A.M, when it will be completely based on data from the past 24 hours. You can go here for more information on the situation.
MNET has provided compensation to 11 of the 12 former Produce 101 contestants who were eliminated due to the producers manipulating votes. According to MNET, they’re still in negotiations with the final contestant. You can read a translation of MNET’s statement here.
Sowon is the 2nd GFriend member after Yerin to sign with a new agency and announce her future plans. She has joined IOK Company, and it seems like she will be focusing on acting for the time being. From this point on, she will also go by her name Kim Sojung instead of Sowon.
OneAndOnly is now six members, as Love left the group this week for personal reasons. You can read 8D Entertainment’s statement about it here.
There have been more reports about SM Entertainment founder Lee Soo Man looking to sell his shares in the company. (He’s currently the biggest shareholder, which means that whoever replaces him will have some amount of control over SM.) Some of the big company names mentioned as part of the ongoing discussion include CJ E&M, HYBE, and Kakao. You can read more about the situation here.
EXO member Xiumin has tested positive for COVID-19 and is currently recovering. The other EXO members tested negative, but will also be self-isolating for the time being. You can read SM Entertainment’s statements about the situation here.
JYP Entertainment has revealed three members of their upcoming 2022 girl group (which is currently known as JYPn): Jinni, Jiwoo, and Kyujin. You can watch their dance video here.

This Week’s Debuts and Comebacks

(Please note that I won’t necessarily link every release that came out this week – just the ones that I’m aware of or popped up on my radar. The same is true of the “Coming Up Next Week” category.)

ASTRO, “After Midnight” (8/2)

Jeon Somi, “Dumb Dumb” (8/2)

Sunmi, “You Can’t Sit With Us” (8/6)

Golden Child, “Ra Pam Pam” (8/2)

Weeekly, “Holiday Party” (8/4)

Coming Up Next Week

Monday (8/9)	Tuesday (8/10)	Thursday (8/12)
Hyoyeon (DJ HYO) (Girls’ Generation)	Ten (NCT) (for SM Station)	Park Jihoon
ONF	Hyolyn and Dasom (SISTAR)
The Boyz
Ha Sungwoon

This Week’s Music Show Wins

NOTE: Aside from Inkigayo, most music shows didn’t air or announce winners this week because of the Tokyo Olympics.

The Show (SBS MTV)	No broadcast/winner
Show Champion (MBC)	No broadcast/winner
M! Countdown (MNET)	No broadcast/winner
Music Bank (KBS)	D.O. (EXO), “Rose” (1st win) – no broadcast
Music Core (MBC)	No broadcast/winner
Inkigayo (SBS)	BTS, “Permission to Dance” (7th win)

Album Sales, Streaming, and Charting

Gaon Chart

NOTE: Gaon‘s weekly charts reflect the previous week. To see a full breakdown of the chart, you can go here.

	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5
Album Sales	D.O. (EXO), Empathy	Dreamcatcher, Summer Holiday	BTS, Butter	DPR Live, IITE COOL	Taemin (SHINee), Advice
Overall Digital	MSG Wannabe M.O.M, “Foolish Love”	Lee Mujin, “Traffic Light”	AKMU and IU, “NAKKA”	aespa, “Next Level”	BTS, “Permission to Dance”
Streaming	MSG Wannabe M.O.M, “Foolish Love”	Lee Mujin, “Traffic Light”	aespa, “Next Level”	BTS, “Permission to Dance”	BTS, “Butter”
Downloads	Im Young Woong, “Trust in Me”	AKMU and IU, “NAKKA”	D.O, “Rose”	AKMU, “Hey Kid, Close your Eyes”	AKMU, “Tictoc Tictoc Tictoc”
Social	BTS	BLACKPINK	TWICE	Im Young Woong	Kim Ho Joong

The International Side of K-pop

BTS’s “Butter” ranked #1 on Billboard‘s “Hot 100” for the ninth (non-consecutive) week, officially becoming the chart’s longest-running #1 hit of 2021. Meanwhile, “Permission to Dance”placed at #9.
BTS also had three music videos reach new viewer milestones on YouTube:
- “Dynamite” is now the fastest K-pop group music video to reach 1.2 billion views, breaking the record previously held by BLACKPINK’s “Kill This Love.” It’s now the third BTS music video with that many views, after “DNA” and “Boy With Luv.”
- “Butter” reached 500 million views.
- “Airplane Pt. 2” (the Japanese version) hit 200 million views.
TXT’s album The Chaos Chapter: FREEZE ranked #121 on the Billboard 200 in its eighth week on the chart. It’s still that chart’s longest-charting K-pop album of 2021 so far.

Notable Variety Shows Featuring K-pop Idols

	Weekly Idol	Knowing Brothers	Amazing Saturday
This Week	Golden Child	Non-idol guests	Summer Special: Kwanghee, Jaejae, Wooyoung (2PM), Minhyuk (Monsta X), Miyeon ((G)I-DLE)
Next Week	The Boyz	Non-idol guests	Joy and Yeri (Red Velvet)

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), The Seoul Story (Twitter @theseoulstory), and Girl Group Zone! (Twitter @girlgroupzone)

FEATURED IMAGE SOURCE: SBS K-Pop’s Twitter (ASTRO on Inkigayo) – see original tweet here

VIDEO SOURCES: YouTube, ABYSS Company (Sunmi), The Black Label (Jeon Somi), Fantagio Entertainment (ASTRO), JYP Entertainment (trainee dance video), Play M Entertainment (Weeekly)*, Woollim Entertainment (Golden Child)
*Music video for “Holiday Party” is distributed by 1theK.

OTHER SOURCES: YouTube, Wikipedia, Billboard, Gaon Chart, KBS, MBC, MNET, SBS