KUALA LUMPUR: It seems that K-Pop artistes are the most influential celebrities in South Korea at the moment.
According to Koreaboo, Forbes had recently released the 2019 edition of its annual Korea Power Celebrity list, which saw international K-Pop group BlackPink taking the top spot.
This was followed by BTS, Wanna One, Kang Daniel and Red Velvet who made up the Top 5 on the list.
Some of the other K-Pop sensations were EXO (10), Twice (21), Girls’ Generation (27) and Mamamoo (29).
Published by the Korean version of Forbes magazine since 2010, the list ranks the Top 40 Most Powerful Celebrities in Korea and includes famous personalities from sports, music, arts, film and television.
They are ranked according to their professional achievements, influence, popularity and earnings from the past year.
Koreaboo added that the popular business magazine apparently made a slight alteration to the selection criteria this year to include social media presence and media exposure.
The tweak gave BlackPink an edge over BTS due to the female quartet’s personal members’ Instagram accounts and the music outfit’s more regular appearances on Korean television.
If that’s not enough, BlackPink was also named the most popular K-Pop group on Spotify for the month.
Koreaboo reported that Spotify had released its 20 Most Popular K-Pop Groups On Spotify For April 2019 list and added that artistes in the K-Pop genre had already doubled or even tripled their Spotify listeners since last year.
BlackPink came in at No. 1 with over 17 million monthly listeners while BTS took second place with close to 17 million monthly listeners.
The Top 5 spots were completed by Red Velvet (3.04 million), Twice (2.84 million) and Exo (2.71 million).
Shop k-beauty products online without spending extra money. Save more with exclusive Althea promo code now.