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A School With a Third the Alumni Has More Than Double the Wikipedia Reach Per Person
School of Performing Arts Seoul has 125 credited alumni with measurable Wikipedia language editions — a median of 13 per person. Seoul Institute of the Arts has 352, nearly three times as many, at a median of 6.
The table this is written from: /what-moves-english-reading
School of Performing Arts Seoul (SOPA) has a third as many credited alumni on Wikidata as Seoul Institute of the Arts. Its alumni’s Wikipedia articles exist in more than double the number of language editions per person.
What the numbers say
We linked every Korean public figure with a Wikidata “educated at” entry to their school, then counted how many language editions of Wikipedia carry each person’s own article — a rough proxy for how widely known someone has become outside Korea.
| School | Alumni (measured) | Median language editions | Share in 10+ editions | Top name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| School of Performing Arts Seoul | 125 | 13 | 58.4% | Jungkook (68) |
| Seoul Institute of the Arts | 352 | 6 | 31.0% | Cho Jung-seok (57) |
| Chung-Ang University | 310 | 6 | 34.8% | Kim Soo-hyun (52) |
| Dongguk University | 200 | 6 | 41.5% | Jun Ji-hyun (49) |
Seoul Institute of the Arts has nearly three times SOPA’s alumni count, and Chung-Ang University is close behind it — but neither school’s median comes close to SOPA’s. More than half of SOPA’s alumni sit in 10 or more language editions; less than a third of Seoul Institute of the Arts’ do.
Who is on each list
SOPA’s top five are Jungkook (68 editions), Jisoo (68), Kang Seul-gi (59), Bae Suzy (51), and Sulli (47) — five names whose careers are built on K-pop group membership with existing international fan bases. Seoul Institute of the Arts’ top five — Cho Jung-seok, Bae Suzy, Park Seo-joon, Son Ye-jin, Lee Joon-gi — are mostly actors whose international reach follows a drama’s own export path rather than a group’s.
What this can and cannot say
This cannot separate a school’s own effect from who chooses to attend it. SOPA is known for training idol trainees before their labels debut them internationally; a roster tilted toward K-pop idols with pre-existing global fandoms would show exactly this pattern regardless of anything the school itself does. What the count does establish cleanly is that alumni size and per-person reach are not the same measurement — the school with fewer credited alumni has the wider footprint per person, not the other way around.
More single-cause and multi-day spikes are tracked on our what-moves-english-reading hub.
These are statistics, not you. This is not investment advice.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Wikidata — P69 (educated at) linked to P27=Q884 (Korean citizenship) people with an English Wikipedia article; sitelinks count taken as the language-edition footprint. · https://www.wikidata.org/
What we checked
- 4,535 people have a school recorded on Wikidata out of 9,249 Korean public figures in our birth-year roster; every one of the 4,535 could be matched to a school, and no school field was blank once matched.
- 1,519 distinct schools appear. School of Performing Arts Seoul: 125 alumni, all measured, median 13 language editions, 73 alumni (58.4%) in 10 or more editions. Top name: Jungkook (68 editions).
- Seoul Institute of the Arts: 352 alumni, all measured, median 6 language editions, 109 alumni (31.0%) in 10 or more editions. Top name: Cho Jung-seok (57 editions).
- Chung-Ang University, the second-largest school by alumni count (310), has a median of 6 editions — the same as Seoul Institute of the Arts, not higher.
What we left out, and why
- Any claim that one school trains people better than another. Wikidata's educated_at field does not distinguish a degree earned from a short course, and does not record when someone attended.
- Cause. A school with a K-pop-idol-training program will skew toward acts with existing international fandoms who already have wide language-edition footprints before their Wikipedia article is created.
- Every school in Korea. This counts only the 4,535 Korean public figures already in our roster who have a school recorded — schools with alumni outside that roster are invisible here.
The data behind this
Written from the same data
If you work in this business
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