A Korean awards show is being staged in Kaohsiung. Our reading data says that is where the audience is
The Asia Artist Awards is running its 2026 lineup posts under the line IN KAOHSIUNG. We had measured which language edition reads Korean stars most: Chinese leads for 306 of 478. Lee Da-hee, named today, is read 2.4x more in Chinese.
The table this is written from: /read-in
An awards show for Korean artists is putting its 2026 lineup out under a line that names the city: IN KAOHSIUNG. Kaohsiung is in southern Taiwan.
We have no inside knowledge of why. What we do have is a measurement of where Korean stars are actually read, finished this week, and it points the same direction.
The panel
Across 478 Korean entertainers, 15 Wikipedia language editions and June to August 2026, the edition that reads them most — with English set aside — is Chinese for 306 of them, 64.0%. Japanese leads for 142.
Chinese Wikipedia is blocked in mainland China. So the readers producing that lead are in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and the wider Chinese-speaking diaspora. That single fact is why this article exists: a Chinese-edition lead is not a mainland audience, and it is a Taiwan-and-Southeast-Asia one.
The first name in today’s posts
Two of today’s lineup posts named the same artist, Lee Da-hee. We looked her up after reading the posts, not before.
| Edition | Reads, June–August 2026 |
|---|---|
| English | 51,941 |
| Chinese | 22,875 |
| Japanese | 9,477 |
Chinese reads her 2.4 times as often as Japanese does.
She is not unusual in the panel. Of the twelve people with the largest Chinese-edition counts, every one has Japanese in second place:
| Person | Chinese | Japanese |
|---|---|---|
| So Ji-sub | 330,748 | 97,731 |
| Park Eun-bin | 201,326 | 113,304 |
| Son Na-eun | 185,071 | 28,819 |
| Byeon Woo-seok | 179,973 | 87,529 |
| Lim Ji-yeon | 165,436 | 93,789 |
| Jung Hae-in | 155,431 | 94,032 |
| Hwasa | 112,332 | 16,451 |
| IU | 102,141 | 55,114 |
IU is in today’s Korean headlines for something entirely unrelated — a haircut. She is also read almost twice as much in Chinese as in Japanese.
Where it goes the other way
The pattern is not universal, and the counter-examples matter. Son Ye-jin, also in today’s headlines, is read 77,502 times in Japanese against 50,424 in Chinese. So is Hyun Bin, Song Joong-ki, Park Seo-joon and nine others in our Japanese-leading list.
142 of 478 is not a rounding error. Anyone planning around this should plan around a split audience, not a single one.
What this article does not claim
It does not say the show chose Kaohsiung because of reading data. We have no information about the decision and did not ask for any. Two independent things point the same way; that is all that is being reported.
It does not say a language is a country. Every figure above is a Wikipedia language edition. Chinese spans Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and the diaspora, and excludes mainland China by blocking. Japanese is closer to a single country but is not identical to one.
It does not say why any edition leads. Diaspora size, promotion history and the editing culture of each Wikipedia would all produce this shape, and pageview counts cannot separate them.
It is not the whole roster. Only people whose Wikidata entry links to at least 20 editions were measured, which is 478 of them.
The full table for all 478 people is on which language edition reads Korean stars.
This is a count of Wikipedia reads. It is a statistic, not a statement about any individual, and not a claim about any event’s plans.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Wikimedia Foundation — Pageviews REST API — pageviews/per-article, all-access, user agent only (bots excluded), monthly granularity, June to August 2026, requested separately for each of 15 language editions. · https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/
- Wikidata — Sitelinks — each edition's article title was read from the person's Wikidata entry rather than guessed. · https://www.wikidata.org
- Star News (스타뉴스) — Front-page headlines archived by us on 9 September 2026 at 11:57 KST, including two lineup posts carrying the line 'Asia Artist Awards IN KAOHSIUNG'. Used to date the occasion and to pick which name to look up, never as a source of a number.
What we checked
- The venue line is quoted from the lineup posts as they appeared in our headline archive. We did not confirm the event's date, venue or ticketing with the organiser, and this article makes no claim about any of them.
- Lee Da-hee was not selected because her numbers were favourable. She was the first artist named in today's lineup posts, and we looked her up afterwards. Had she led in Japanese, that is what this article would say.
- The panel-wide figure — Chinese leading for 306 of 478 — was measured on 9 September before any of today's headlines were read, and is published in full on the linked page rather than only in the fragment quoted here.
- Every one of the 7,170 person-edition requests behind the panel came back; none was blocked, so no cell is a silent zero.
What we left out, and why
- Any claim that a Chinese-edition lead reflects readers in mainland China. Chinese Wikipedia is blocked there. This is stated in the article because omitting it would make the article false.
- Any claim about why the show is being held where it is. We have no information on that and did not ask.
The data behind this
Written from the same data
If you work in this business
Everything on this page is measured from the same weekly Netflix lists, per market and per title. We publish the pages free; what we sell is the same measurement cut to one company's catalogue — including the figures behind /read-in.
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