BTS's Jungkook has illuminated his popularity by becoming the top-selling K-pop solo artist in album sales for 2023. According to the '2023 Accumulated Album (Physical) Sales Top 15' released by the Circle Chart operated by the Korea Music Content Association (1st to 50th week), Jungkook's debut solo album 'GOLDEN' recorded an impressive 2,702,453 units sold.
Jungkook, with the release of 'GOLDEN' in November last year, secured the top spot in the accumulated album sales for 2023 among all K-pop solo artists, both male and female, with just this single album.
Among all K-pop groups and solo artists, Jungkook ranked 12th, and among male groups and soloists, he ranked 9th. 'GOLDEN' catapulted to 'Double Million Seller' status, surpassing 2 million sales within just 5 hours of its release. Consequently, it set a new record for the highest first-week sales (Chodong) by any K-pop solo artist on the day of its release.
Furthermore, within just two weeks of its release, 'GOLDEN' sold a total of 2,501,158 units, marking a new historical record as the first solo album to sell over 2.5 million units since the Hanter Chart revised its counting method in 2010.
'GOLDEN' also made an impressive debut at 2nd place on Billboard's main album chart, the 'Billboard 200,' becoming the first and only Asian solo artist album to chart in the top 50 for seven weeks, and continued to rank for seven consecutive weeks after debuting at the 3rd position on the UK Official Albums 'Top 100' Chart - the highest ever for a K-Pop solo artist album.
'GOLDEN' has been included in New York Times' 'Best Albums of 2023' and UPROXX's 'The Best Albums Of 2023.' Moreover, it's the first K-pop solo artist album to sell over 500,000 units in the U.S. in 2023.
Additionally, 'GOLDEN' has continued its unstoppable success story, breaking records on the world's largest music streaming platform, Spotify, by being the first and only K-pop solo album to surpass 2 billion streams in the shortest time of 42 days. It also achieved the unprecedented feat for a Korean solo artist album by reaching 1 billion streams on YouTube Music, writing an unceasing hit saga.
