Stars · music
Four of Korea's Five Most-Voted Stars Are Trot Singers. English Wikipedia Reads Them Least.
In this week's STARPOLL 'King of Kings' vote, trot singers took four of the top five places. On English Wikipedia, Lim Young-woong, with 389,228 votes, averages 81 reads a day. Actor Kim Soo-hyun, fourth in the vote, averages 1,337.
Every week the Korean entertainment site Star News publishes the results of its STARPOLL fan vote. This week, in the all-category “King of Kings” ranking, four of the top five names are trot singers, performers of the older, ballad-based genre that dominates Korean television’s singing contests.
English Wikipedia, which we use as a measure of international look-it-up interest, sees almost none of them.
The vote and the readers, side by side
| King of Kings rank | Star | Genre | Votes | English Wikipedia reads a day (median) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lim Young-woong | Trot | 389,228 | 81 |
| 2 | Park Seo-jin | Trot | 181,132 | no English article found |
| 3 | Song Ga-in | Trot | 36,917 | 13 |
| 4 | Kim Soo-hyun | Actor | 32,478 | 1,337 |
| 5 | Lee Chan-won | Trot | 29,896 | 24 |
Lim Young-woong collected twelve times Kim Soo-hyun’s votes. Kim Soo-hyun’s English Wikipedia page is read about sixteen times as often as Lim’s. Park Seo-jin, second in the vote with 181,132, does not have an English Wikipedia article under his name that we could find.
The same split in the categories
The individual categories follow the same line. The male trot winner, Park Seo-jin, took 45,114 votes, roughly three times the male idol winner, CORTIS’s Sunghyun (15,418), and four times the male actor winner, Kim Soo-hyun (10,256). On English Wikipedia the order turns over: the CORTIS group page averages 1,527 reads a day, Kim Soo-hyun 1,337, and trot singer Young Tak, second in the male trot vote, 50.
Why the two numbers disagree
They count different things. A STARPOLL vote is a fan campaign: app users vote repeatedly, and fandoms organise to push their star up the board. Trot’s audience in Korea is widely described as older, and the vote shows how hard that audience pushes. English Wikipedia reads show something else: how many people outside Korea, or reading in English, look a name up.
Trot is one of the biggest genres inside Korea and one of the least exported. These two numbers put that in one table.
What this does and does not say
Votes are not popularity, and English Wikipedia is not the world; it leaves out Korean-language readers entirely. We do not rank anyone by either number alone. The narrower point is that the stars Korea votes for hardest are, on this measure, the ones English-language readers look up least.
STARPOLL Star Ranking results published by Star News, collected 23 October 2026 (top five per category only). English Wikipedia pageviews, user traffic, daily, 16 September–22 October 2026; medians, not means.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Star News (STARPOLL Star Ranking) — Star Ranking page, fan-vote results by category, top five per category as published, collected 23 October 2026. · https://www.starnewskorea.com/star-ranking
- Wikimedia — Pageviews per-article, en.wikipedia, all-access, user traffic only (bots excluded), daily, 16 September–22 October 2026 (37 days), for Lim_Young-woong, Song_Ga-in, Lee_Chan-won, Kim_Soo-hyun, Young_Tak, Cortis and others. · https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/
- Wikipedia API — Title lookup with redirects resolved, 23 October 2026: Lim Young-woong, Song Ga-in, Lee Chan-won and Kim Soo-hyun are articles (not redirects); no English article was found for Park Seo-jin under that name or 'Park Seo-jin (singer)', or by search. · https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php
What we checked
- STARPOLL 'King of Kings' top five, 23 Oct 2026: Lim Young-woong 389,228; Park Seo-jin 181,132; Song Ga-in 36,917; Kim Soo-hyun 32,478; Lee Chan-won 29,896.
- Median daily English Wikipedia reads, 16 Sep–22 Oct: Kim Soo-hyun 1,337; Lim Young-woong 81; Lee Chan-won 24; Song Ga-in 13; Park Seo-jin — no English article found.
- Category winners the same week: male trot Park Seo-jin 45,114; female trot Song Ga-in 20,929; male idol CORTIS's Sunghyun 15,418; male actor Kim Soo-hyun 10,256; female idol NewJeans' Minji 8,046; male sports Lee Kang-in 2,539.
- For comparison, other English Wikipedia medians over the same 37 days: Cortis (group page) 1,527; Lee Kang-in 960; Kim Hye-yoon 462; Minji (singer) 306; Young Tak 50.
What we left out, and why
- STARPOLL votes are a fan campaign: app users vote, often repeatedly and in organised drives. They measure how hard a fandom pushes, not how many people follow a star. We do not treat votes as popularity.
- Korean-language Wikipedia, Naver or YouTube figures — English Wikipedia only.
- Rankings below fifth place, which the Star Ranking page does not publish without a login.
Written from the same data
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