A 14-year age gap made three headlines today. Only 2 of 337 Korean groups have one that wide

Three separate items in this morning’s Korean entertainment headlines described a couple by the number of years between them: a wife 14 years younger, a partner 9 years younger, another partner 9 years younger. A fourth counted a relationship in years instead — a decade together.

We hold no data about anyone’s relationships and will not be measuring those. What we do hold is the birth year of 1,464 people across 428 Korean music groups. So we asked a question the same shape as the headline, about a place where the years are on the record: how many years separate the oldest and youngest member of a group?

The median is 4 years

Of the 428 groups, 337 have a recorded birth year for at least two members and can be measured.

The median spread is 4 years; the mean is 4.3. A 14-year span, unremarkable enough in a couple to be a headline label, is close to the outer edge of what Korean groups contain.

The widest, and one we refuse to count

One entry sits far above all of these: Metafive, at 29 years. We have left it out of the headline because we could not confirm it is a Korean group, and a single unconfirmed row should not be allowed to set a number. Naming it costs us the more dramatic figure and is cheaper than being wrong.

The man in today’s headline is the eldest of a group spanning 12 years

The 14-year item concerns Joon Park, born 1969, who is the oldest of god’s five recorded members. The youngest, Kim Tae-woo, was born 1981.

So the same person appears twice in the same morning under two different framings of the same kind of number — one treated as notable, one not mentioned at all. That is the whole point of this comparison. A 12-year span inside a working group passes without comment; a 14-year span in a marriage is a headline in three publications.

We are not arguing that either framing is wrong. We are putting the two numbers on the same page, which is something a reader cannot do from the headlines alone.

Who is in the panel

328 member slots have no sex recorded, which is more than a fifth of the panel. Any breakdown by sex here is a breakdown of what editors happened to fill in.

What this is not

Not about anyone’s relationship. We hold no relationship data. The couples in today’s headlines are the occasion for this count and appear nowhere in it.

Not current line-ups. Wikidata records people who were members. After School’s 14-year span includes members from across the group’s history.

Not complete. 72 of the 409 groups could not be measured at all, and they are reported as unmeasurable rather than folded in as zero.

Not an explanation. Nothing here says why groups are assembled from narrow age bands. Training-cohort practice and the way Wikidata is written would both produce a median of four years.

The full table by birth year, including the age each person reaches this year, is on Korean group members by birth year.

This is a count of public records. It is a statistic, not a statement about any individual.