Lovely Runner's Co-Stars Both Outread Their Own Fan-Vote Rank
STARPOLL's actor vote ranked Kim Hye-yoon first among women, Byeon Woo-seok third among men. On English Wikipedia, their Lovely Runner co-star order flips, and Park Eun-bin reads far higher than the woman who outvoted her.
The table this is written from: /what-moves-english-reading
STARPOLL, the fan-voting app run by STARNEWS and official partner of the AAA 2026 awards, ranks Korean actors the way it ranks idols — a running public vote, visible without logging in. On 16 September 2026, its Male Actor category put Kim Soo-hyun first, Lee Jun-ho second, Byeon Woo-seok third. Its Female Actor category put Kim Hye-yoon first, Park Eun-bin second.
We hold a different number for the same names: English Wikipedia pageviews, which count people who looked a name up rather than people who cast a vote. We checked whether the two orders agree.
What we measured
We pulled 30 days of daily English Wikipedia pageviews (18 August-16 September 2026) for the top three men and top two women in STARPOLL’s actor vote.
| STARPOLL vote | Vote rank | 30-day Wikipedia total | Wikipedia rank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kim Soo-hyun | 29,713 | 1 | 52,236 | 1 |
| Lee Jun-ho | 16,265 | 2 | 25,841 | 3 |
| Byeon Woo-seok | 6,180 | 3 | 43,808 | 2 |
| Kim Hye-yoon | 15,698 | 1 | 16,471 | 2 |
| Park Eun-bin | 12,010 | 2 | 95,956 | 1 |
Kim Soo-hyun holds first place on both counts. Below him, the order breaks. Byeon Woo-seok drew well under half of Lee Jun-ho’s votes but 1.7 times his Wikipedia reading. Among women, the gap is larger: Park Eun-bin placed second in the vote, behind Kim Hye-yoon, but her Wikipedia total runs 5.8x higher.
Two names, one show, opposite gaps
Kim Hye-yoon and Byeon Woo-seok played the two leads of Lovely Runner, a 2024 series Byeon has called one of the “greatest achievements” of his career and a documented international breakout for him. In STARPOLL’s vote, Kim Hye-yoon outranks him — but on our reading count, his total (43,808) runs more than 2.6 times higher than hers (16,471). Same show, same audience moment, and the domestic vote and the English-language reading count still don’t agree on who it moved more.
Park Eun-bin’s gap has a similarly specific, confirmed driver: her 2022 series Extraordinary Attorney Woo won the Grand Prize at the 59th Baeksang Arts Awards and drew wide English-language press coverage internationally. We don’t hold an equivalent confirmed international moment for Kim Hye-yoon or Lee Jun-ho — which doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist, only that we haven’t found a source for it.
What this does and doesn’t tell us
A fan vote counts people motivated to vote, repeatedly, for a name they already follow. A pageview counts someone who looked a name up — often because of a specific show, award, or news event, not sustained fandom. Both are real measurements of real behavior. They are not measuring the same thing, and this month, for these five names, they don’t point the same direction.
Our running method for checking what actually moves English Wikipedia reading is on what-moves-english-reading.
These are statistics, not you. This is not investment advice.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- STARNEWS — STARPOLL — Star Ranking leaderboard (fan-vote app STARPOLL, official AAA 2026 popularity-vote partner), Male Actor and Female Actor categories, accessed 2026-09-16 · https://www.starnewskorea.com/star-ranking
- Wikimedia Foundation — Pageviews API — Daily English Wikipedia pageviews, all-access, user agents only (bots excluded), for the five named actors, 18 August-16 September 2026 · https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/
- Rappler — 'Byeon Woo-seok says being part of hit K-drama 'Lovely Runner' is one of his 'greatest achievements'' · https://www.rappler.com/entertainment/celebrities/byeon-woo-seok-korean-drama-lovely-runner-greatest-achievements/
- English Wikipedia — 'Extraordinary Attorney Woo' — Park Eun-bin's Grand Prize win at the 59th Baeksang Arts Awards · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Attorney_Woo
What we checked
- Male Actor vote, accessed 16 September 2026: 1. Kim Soo-hyun 29,713 votes. 2. Lee Jun-ho 16,265. 3. Byeon Woo-seok 6,180. 4. Chu Young-woo 1,938. 5. Kim Nam-gil 1,735.
- Same five names, 30-day English Wikipedia totals (18 Aug-16 Sep 2026): Kim Soo-hyun 52,236 (1,801/day). Lee Jun-ho 25,841 (891/day). Byeon Woo-seok 43,808 (1,511/day).
- Byeon Woo-seok placed third in the vote with well under half of Lee Jun-ho's votes, but read 1.7x higher on English Wikipedia over the same 30 days.
- Female Actor vote, same day: 1. Kim Hye-yoon 15,698 votes. 2. Park Eun-bin 12,010. 3. Lee Se-young 10,060. 4. Shin Hye-sun 2,091. 5. Kim Ji-won 1,897.
- Same top two, 30-day Wikipedia totals: Kim Hye-yoon 16,471 (568/day). Park Eun-bin 95,956 (3,309/day) — 5.8x Kim Hye-yoon's total, despite placing second in the vote.
- Kim Hye-yoon and Byeon Woo-seok played the two leads of the same 2024 series, Lovely Runner. In the vote, Kim Hye-yoon outranked Byeon Woo-seok (1st vs. 3rd among women and men respectively — different categories, not a head-to-head). In our Wikipedia count, Byeon Woo-seok's total (43,808) is more than 2.6x Kim Hye-yoon's (16,471).
What we left out, and why
- Chu Young-woo and Kim Nam-gil's Wikipedia reading. We pulled figures only for the top three per category, where the vote-vs-reading contrast was clearest; extending the same pull to the rest is a next step, not done here.
- A cause for either gap beyond the one we could confirm. Park Eun-bin's 2022 Extraordinary Attorney Woo drew confirmed international award recognition (Grand Prize, 59th Baeksang Arts Awards) and wide English-language press coverage; Byeon Woo-seok's Lovely Runner (2024) is documented as his breakout to international audiences. We don't have a similarly confirmed international driver for Kim Hye-yoon or Lee Jun-ho's vote-leading domestic positions, and we're not guessing at one.
- Any claim that STARPOLL's vote is inflated or unrepresentative. It measures people motivated to vote; our number measures people who looked a name up. Different behaviors, not a right-and-wrong pair.
- Votes from 6th place down. STARPOLL's public leaderboard renders only the top five per category without a login.
The data behind this
Written from the same data
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