BTS's Jungkook shone as the top-selling solo artist in the K-pop scene in 2023, with his solo album "GOLDEN" claiming the highest album sales.
According to the '2023 Accumulated Album (Physical) Sales Top 15' announced by the Circle Chart operated by the Korea Music Content Association (weeks 1-50), Jungkook's first solo album 'GOLDEN' recorded a sales figure of 2,702,453 copies.
Jungkook, with his single album 'GOLDEN' released in November of the previous year, secured the top spot in the cumulative album sales for 2023, including both male and female solo artists in K-pop. He ranked 12th overall among all K-pop groups and solo artists and 9th among male groups and solo artists.
'GOLDEN' achieved the milestone of surpassing 2 million copies in sales within just 5 hours of its release, becoming a 'double million seller.' On the release day, it set a new record by achieving the top spot in first-week sales for a K-pop solo artist, based solely on the sales on the day of release. Additionally, within two weeks of release, a total of 2,501,158 copies were sold. This marked a new history as the first solo album to sell over 2.5 million copies in over 13 years since the revamp of the album sales calculation method by Hanteo Chart in 2010.
'GOLDEN' made its debut at second place on the 'Billboard 200,' the main album chart of the world-renowned 'Billboard,' becoming the first and only Asian solo artist album to stay within the top 50 for seven consecutive weeks. It also ranked continuously for seven weeks on the UK Official Albums Chart, debuting at an impressive third place – the highest ranking for a debut K-pop solo artist album.


Written by Mun Wan Sik
Translated by Lee So Yun