These are the biggest Korean charts!

K-Pop Blog > Overview > Korean Charts

Whether an album or song was successful is often measured by charts: What place did the album reach in the charts, how long did it stay at the top and what chart records did it perhaps even set? It's no different in South Korea, of course!

Today, we're going to introduce you to the biggest charts in South Korea and also explain a few terms that are often mentioned in connection with charts and may be confusing to new K-Pop fans.

• Circle Chart
• Hanteo Chart
• South Korea Songs
• Melon Chart
• Chart terms

The biggest chart in South Korea is the national Circle Chart!

It was established in 2010 by the Korea Music Content Association, supported by the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. You might be more familiar with the name "Gaon Chart", because the new name "Circle Chart" was only introduced in July 2022.

The following charts are among others part of the Circle Chart: Global K-Pop Chart, Digital Chart, Streaming Chart, Download Chart, BGM Chart. These charts are about individual songs. When it comes to albums, there is also the Album Chart and the Retail Album Chart. What the individual charts are made up of is mostly self-explanatory. For example, the Download Chart counts how often a song was downloaded and the Streaming Chart counts how often a song was streamed. The BGM (background music) chart is about how often a song was purchased to serve as background music in, for example, TV shows or on the radio.

The Digital Chart is simply made up of all three criteria - download, streaming, BGM - and is accordingly one of the most important Circle Charts. The Global K-Pop Chart was not added until 2022 when the name was changed from "Gaon" to "Circle" and reflects how many times a K-Pop song was streamed worldwide. Streaming services that the chart takes into account include Korean music streaming services Melon and Genie.

The Album Chart documents how many times an album was sold online and offline. This chart has a weekly format as well as a monthly and an annual format. The Retail Album Chart counts how often an album was sold offline, i.e. directly in stores.

You can find all Circle Charts here.

As you can see, not only Korean but also international fans can influence the Circle Charts. There are also many international stores that work with Korean retailers, so your albums often count towards the charts even if you didn't buy them in Korea.

For example, we - Nolae - work with Korean partners who are all Hanteo Family members.

Hanteo Chart

The Hanteo Chart has existed for over 30 years now and refers to sales of K-Pop albums in real time. Hanteo is synchronized with over 1,500 stores worldwide and can access the sales figures at any time to reflect real-time data in the chart. These stores are so-called certified Hanteo Family members. So when you buy your albums from a certified Hanteo Family store, you have direct influence on the Hanteo charts! Since we work with Hanteo Family members, every purchase you make at Nolae is also considered by Hanteo!

In addition to the Album Charts, Hanteo also has a Digital Chart, which analyzes data from national and international streaming services, or the Music Chart, which combines the Digital Chart and physical album sales. You can find all the charts on the Hanteo website.

The Hanteo Chart was also included in Billboard's K-Pop Hot 100 Singles Chart, which was established in 2011. In addition to the Hanteo Chart, the chart also referenced streaming and download data from Korean music streaming service Naver VIBE and how many times a song was played on Korean television or radio. However, the K-Pop Hot 100 chart was discontinued on April 23, 2022.

South Korea Songs

The South Korea Songs Chart was established by Billboard in May 2022 and is part of Billboard's Hits of the World Chart Collection. Weekly, from Friday to Thursday, the chart counts how many times a song was downloaded by digital music distributors and how many times the song was streamed in South Korea. "Still Life" by Big Bang was the very first number one song on the new chart!

Melon Chart

Melon is an online K-pop store and music streaming service founded in 2004. Melon is the biggest music streaming service in South Korea, followed by Genie or Youtube Music among others!

The streaming service also has its own charts! This includes, for example, the 24 Hits Chart, which is updated every hour. It documents how often a song has been downloaded and streamed in the last 24 hours. There is also the relatively new Top 100 Chart, which counts 50% of the downloads and streams in the last 24 hours and 50% of the usage within the last hour.

Melon has also been hosting its own award show since around 2009: MMA (Melon Music Awards).

Chart terms

Now that we've introduced you to all the major charts in South Korea, let's clarify a few terms you should know as a K-Pop fan:

All-Kill: When an artist tops the Korean real-time charts and the daily charts at the same time.

Perfect All-Kill: To achieve a Perfect All-Kill, an artist must top not only the real-time and daily charts, but also the weekly charts.

Whether an artist has achieved a Perfect All-Kill is evaluated using the Instiz iChart. This online music chart summarizes rankings from major Korean music streaming services. These include Melon, Genie, Bugs!, Naver VIBE and Flo.

Digital Monster: Sometimes shortened to "Digimon". The title is used to describe artists who always do well in the charts and can boast many digital sales.

Sajaegi: The term is used in South Korea when companies illegally increase the chart rankings of their artists. This is because there are companies that buy their own artists' albums in large quantities or have the songs streamed thousands of times so that they do better on the charts.

This tactic is sometimes even used by fans who buy an album hundreds of times if they can afford it to support their artist. Sometimes people discuss what is already "Sajaegi" and what is not yet.

Is there another term we should clarify? Feel free to let us know in the comments!