A 100 million-view music video used to feel like a rare event in K-pop. Today, the club is much larger — but counting it properly is surprisingly difficult.
KWaveScope reviewed current YouTube view data and milestone reports and verified a floor of at least 90 K-pop and Korean-pop artist identities with at least one official music video above 100 million views as of October 13, 2026.
That number is not presented as an official industry total. No such registry exists, and the answer changes depending on what counts as K-pop, whether subunits are separate acts, and whether performance videos are treated as music videos. The useful part is not pretending those grey areas do not exist. It is setting a rule, applying it consistently, and then asking what the result tells us.
How KWaveScope counted the 100 million-view club
For this count, an artist qualifies once they have at least one YouTube upload explicitly presented as an official MV, M/V or official music video with 100 million views or more. Uploads on an artist’s own channel or an established label or distributor channel are accepted.
| Category | Counted? |
|---|---|
| Groups and solo artists | Yes |
| Established named units such as NCT 127, NCT DREAM, NCT U and MISAMO | Yes, as separate artist identities |
| Official label/distributor uploads | Yes |
| Dance practices, live stages and lyric videos | No |
| Performance-only or special clips when no standard MV qualifies | No |
| One-off collaboration billing created for a single song | Not added as a separate artist identity |
| Global K-pop-adjacent acts | Discussed separately rather than added to the core count |
This distinction matters. MONSTA X, for example, have a “HERO” rooftop performance version above 100 million views, but that upload is not the song’s standard official music video, so it does not qualify under this rule. On the other side of the boundary, a group such as KATSEYE has multiple videos above 100 million views, but KWaveScope keeps the global group outside the strict core count rather than silently changing the definition of K-pop to make the number larger.
The result should therefore be read as a verified minimum, not a permanent ceiling.
The verified floor: 90 artist identities
The 90 identities in KWaveScope’s working count span idol groups, bands, solo careers, established subunits and Korean pop artists commonly tracked within the wider K-pop ecosystem.
Groups, units and band identities — 65
2NE1, 4Minute, aespa, AKMU, AOA, Apink, ATEEZ, BABYMONSTER, BEAST, BIGBANG, BLACKPINK, BOL4, BTS, CORTIS, DAY6, Davichi, ENHYPEN, EVERGLOW, EXID, EXO, f(x), FIFTY FIFTY, GFRIEND, Girls’ Generation, GOT7, Hearts2Hearts, ILLIT, iKON, ITZY, IVE, IZ*ONE, KARD, KARA, Kep1er, LE SSERAFIM, MAMAMOO, MISAMO, miss A, MOMOLAND, NCT 127, NCT DREAM, NCT U, NewJeans, NMIXX, OH MY GIRL, PENTAGON, Red Velvet, SEVENTEEN, SHINee, SISTAR, Stray Kids, Super Junior, SuperM, T-ara, TREASURE, Trouble Maker, TVXQ, TWICE, TXT, Wanna One, WayV, Weeekly, WINNER, Wonder Girls and X1.
Solo artist identities — 25
Agust D, Ailee, Chungha, Crush, G-Dragon, Henry, Hwasa, HyunA, IU, JENNIE, Jessi, Jimin, JISOO, j-hope, Jung Kook, K.Will, KAI, LISA, Nayeon, PSY, ROSÉ, Sunmi, Taeyang, Taeyeon and Zico.
Why call this “at least 90” after listing 90 names? Because YouTube is a moving database, not a finished archive. Videos cross the threshold every week, older uploads can exist on channels that are not captured cleanly by one ranking service, and borderline genre cases need editorial judgment. Publishing a floor is more defensible than claiming an eternal exact total.
The more interesting story is how different the 100 million-view achievements now look
The same milestone can describe completely different kinds of success.
For the biggest global K-pop acts, 100 million views is no longer a once-in-a-career breakthrough. BTS, BLACKPINK and TWICE have built catalogs in which the threshold has been crossed repeatedly. Stray Kids reached 21 full-group music videos above 100 million views in September 2026. BABYMONSTER reached 13 qualifying music videos in October, while TXT moved to 11 during 2026.
For another artist, the first 100 million can arrive a decade after release and reveal the durability of a song rather than the speed of a fandom campaign.
That is why a simple leaderboard misses the point. One hundred million views can represent explosive launch demand, years of catalog discovery, a fandom’s staying power, or a song that escaped the usual boundaries of K-pop and became part of a broader online culture.
2026 alone shows how wide the gap can be
Some of the clearest examples come from artists entering the club for the first time this year.
| Artist | First 100M MV | 2026 milestone | What it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| TVXQ | “MIROTIC” | February 25 | A legacy song can keep accumulating cultural value for more than 16 years |
| Hearts2Hearts | “RUDE!” | May 22 | A new-generation act can reach the mark within months |
| KARD | “Don’t Recall” | July 8 | An older international-fandom favorite can cross the line years after release |
| CORTIS | “FaSHioN” | September 5 | The threshold remains reachable for very new acts in the current YouTube era |
Those four cases should not be ranked as if they describe the same thing. TVXQ’s result is a long-tail catalog story. Hearts2Hearts and CORTIS are new-generation acceleration stories. KARD’s milestone reflects the persistence of an international fanbase around a song that continued to travel long after its release window.
In other words, 100 million views has become a common language for several very different forms of K-pop longevity.
The club now reaches across K-pop generations
One of the strongest signs of K-pop’s YouTube depth is that the list is not dominated by a single era.
Second-generation names such as TVXQ, Girls’ Generation, BIGBANG, 2NE1, Wonder Girls, KARA, SHINee, Super Junior, 4Minute and T-ara sit alongside third-generation giants such as BTS, BLACKPINK, TWICE, EXO, Red Velvet, GOT7 and SEVENTEEN.
Fourth-generation acts including Stray Kids, aespa, IVE, LE SSERAFIM, (G)I-DLE, ITZY, TXT, ENHYPEN, ATEEZ and NewJeans have turned the threshold into a repeat achievement. And newer names such as ILLIT, BABYMONSTER, Hearts2Hearts and CORTIS show that the pipeline has not stopped.
This is a more useful picture of K-pop’s global reach than looking only at whichever group owns the single most-viewed video. The catalog has become deep enough for multiple generations to remain visible at the same time.
For more context on how those generations developed, see KWaveScope’s history of K-pop’s global rise across five generations.
Why the raw 100M count can still mislead
YouTube views are useful, but they are not a clean popularity ranking.
A video released in 2012 has had far more time to accumulate views than one released in 2026. Some labels place music videos on company channels, while others use artist channels or distributors. Some songs have several official versions that split attention. A fandom may also be unusually organized around YouTube, while another artist’s audience is stronger on Spotify, TikTok, domestic platforms or live touring.
Promotion patterns matter too. Music advertising, autoplay environments and release campaigns can affect how quickly a video grows. None of those factors automatically makes a view illegitimate, but they are reasons not to treat 100 million as a universal conversion rate for fame.
This is also why KWaveScope does not combine dance practices and performance clips with official music videos in the core count. A platform-wide “videos over 100 million” figure can be useful for measuring an artist’s overall YouTube footprint, but it answers a different question from “How many official music videos crossed 100 million?”
So, is 100 million views still a meaningful K-pop milestone?
Yes — but not in the same way it was a decade ago.
When relatively few Korean acts could reach a global YouTube audience at that scale, 100 million views functioned almost like proof of international breakthrough. In 2026, the threshold is no longer reserved for a handful of superstars.
That does not make it meaningless. It changes the question.
For an established superstar, the important measure may be how many songs can keep crossing 100 million and how long the catalog continues to grow. For a rookie, the speed of the first 100 million may reveal immediate international reach. For a legacy act, reaching the threshold years later can show that a song has survived beyond its original fandom cycle.
Viewed this way, 100 million is less useful as a trophy and more useful as a marker of durable global attention.
KATSEYE shows why the definition will get harder, not easier
KATSEYE is a useful boundary case. The group was built through a system closely connected to K-pop training and production, and “Touch” has well over 100 million YouTube views. But KATSEYE is positioned as a global girl group rather than a Korean K-pop group.
KWaveScope therefore leaves KATSEYE outside the strict 90-act core count while treating the group as evidence that K-pop’s production system is spreading beyond the traditional nationality-and-language definition of the genre.
That distinction is likely to become more important as Korean entertainment companies build more multinational acts for specific markets. KWaveScope has explored that shift separately in KATSEYE in Britain: Is K-pop’s Biggest Export Now the System, Not the Language?
What the 90-act count really tells us
What makes the figure interesting is not the number 90 by itself, but how different the artists behind it are.
An older catalog hit can sit beside a 2026 rookie release. A soloist can reach the mark independently of the group that made them famous. A band, a ballad singer, an idol unit and a stadium-level group can all arrive at the same milestone through completely different audiences.
That is the bigger change. K-pop’s 100 million-view club is no longer a tiny circle at the top of the industry; it now cuts across a broad section of Korean pop. The milestone still matters, but the number alone no longer tells the whole story.
One hundred million views still matters. But in 2026, the more revealing question is no longer simply who reached it. It is how they got there, how long it took, and what happened to the song after the milestone passed.
Sources and methodology
- Kworb — YouTube Most Viewed Artists and Most Viewed Music Videos by Korean Artists
- Soompi — YouTube milestone reports for individual K-pop artists and music videos
Data checked October 13, 2026. YouTube view counts change continuously. This article uses a consistent editorial definition rather than claiming an official industry registry, and KWaveScope will update the count as additional qualifying videos or overlooked acts are verified.