Stars · music
A Reputation Ranking Put Jimin, G-Dragon and San in That Order. So Did Our Own Numbers.
A brand reputation ranking put BTS's Jimin first, BIGBANG's G-Dragon second, and ATEEZ's San third. English Wikipedia reading landed in the same order — unlike a group ranking we tested a day earlier.
The table this is written from: /what-moves-english-reading
Two days in a row, we ran the same test on a Korean brand-reputation ranking: does the order the index reports match the order English Wikipedia readers actually looked people up in? Yesterday it didn’t. Today it does.
The Korea Corporate Reputation Institute’s ranking for September 2026, covering individual members of boy groups, put BTS’s Jimin first with a brand reputation index of 3,905,514. BIGBANG’s G-Dragon was second at 3,517,368, up 56.04% from the previous month. ATEEZ’s San was third at 3,296,639, according to STARNEWS.
What we measured
We pulled daily English Wikipedia pageviews for all three over the 29 days ending 19 September 2026 — the same window our K-pop reading panel already covers.
| 29-day average | Highest day | Last 7 days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jimin (1st in the index) | 2,029 a day | 2,738 on 7 Sept | 12,930 |
| G-Dragon (2nd) | 1,592 a day | 2,496 on 12 Sept | 10,585 |
| San (3rd) | 1,371 a day | 1,908 on 2 Sept | 8,624 |
The order is the same as the reputation index: Jimin ahead of G-Dragon, G-Dragon ahead of San. The gap sizes are not identical between the two measures — the reputation index has Jimin only 11.0% ahead of G-Dragon, while our reading count has him 27.5% ahead — but the ranking itself holds in both.
Why we’re not calling this a pattern
We ran the same comparison the day before this one, on a group-level ranking that put girl group Re:Scene first among K-pop groups, ahead of BTS and BLACKPINK. On English Wikipedia, Re:Scene averaged 11 views a day over a comparable window; BTS averaged 6,860 — about 624 times as many. The reputation order and the reading order were not close.
That comparison and this one used the same method and a similar time window, and they came out differently. We don’t have a theory for why a reputation index will sometimes track English-language reading and sometimes not, and two data points is not enough to build one. What we can do is keep running the same test each time one of these rankings comes out, and report what we find rather than what would make a tidier story.
What we could not measure
- The reputation index’s underlying data (Korean-language media mentions, community engagement scores, link and keyword analysis) — we did not verify it and do not redistribute the score itself.
- Any non-English readership. Naver, Korean Wikipedia, and Korean-language social platforms are not part of this measurement.
- Whether either idol’s reading rise on their peak day was caused by a specific news event. We report the peak date; we did not trace a cause for it in this piece.
Where else we test this
Yesterday’s version of this test, run on a group-level ranking · The hub page where we track every event we’ve tested this way
This is not investment advice or a claim about commercial success. It is a count of English Wikipedia page views, compared against a third-party reputation ranking, over a stated window.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Korea Corporate Reputation Institute, via STARNEWS — News report, '1st BTS's Jimin, 2nd BIGBANG's G-Dragon, 3rd ATEEZ's San,' 2026-09-19 · https://www.starnewskorea.com/music/2026/09/19/2026091908430512782
- Wikimedia Foundation — Pageviews API — Daily English Wikipedia pageviews, all-access, user agents only, for Jimin, G-Dragon and San, 21 August-19 September 2026 · https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/
What we checked
- The Korea Corporate Reputation Institute's September 2026 individual boy-group brand reputation index (a third-party score we do not reproduce here) placed Jimin first with an index of 3,905,514, G-Dragon second at 3,517,368 (up 56.04% from August), and San third at 3,296,639. The institute measured 19 August-19 September 2026.
- Over the 29 days we measured (21 August-19 September 2026), Jimin's English Wikipedia page averaged 2,029 views a day, G-Dragon's averaged 1,592, and San's averaged 1,371 — the same order as the reputation index.
- Peak days did not line up with each other or with the ranking's publication date: Jimin's highest day was 7 September (2,738 views), G-Dragon's was 12 September (2,496), and San's was 2 September (1,908).
What we left out, and why
- The brand reputation index's own methodology or score. We report only that the ranking exists and who topped it — the number itself is a third-party measurement we have not verified and do not redistribute.
- Why the order matches this time. We measured Re:Scene against BTS and BLACKPINK a day earlier and the reputation order and the reading order were nowhere close; we don't have a theory for when the two will agree and when they won't, and we're not going to invent one from two data points.
- A claim that reputation causes reading or the reverse. We measured two rankings built from different inputs over overlapping windows, not a causal test.
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 /what-moves-english-reading.
What a company sheet contains, and what it cannot tell you →