Korean entertainment outlets report fan-vote streaks in weeks: one member described this week as number one for 131 straight weeks on one voting app. We hold something different — how many people opened each member’s English Wikipedia page, week by week, for 171 weeks. Two yardsticks, and they do not agree.
We are not checking the app’s number. We do not have that app’s weekly winners, so nothing here says the 131-week streak is right or wrong. A vote is something people press. A page view is something people look up. They measure different acts.
And this is not a popularity ranking. Reading is not liking. Every member here is read tens of thousands of times a week — the members who never led a single week still sit between 12,004 and 14,357 views in a median week. A table of ranks without sizes misleads, so both are in the same table below.
171 weeks, 2023–2026. Ordered by weeks led. Ties count for everyone tied.
| Measure | Count |
|---|---|
| Complete weeks counted | 171 |
| Members compared | 7 |
| Member | Weeks read most | Share of 171 weeks | Longest run of weeks | Median week | Total views | Page titles counted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| V | 108 | 63.2% | 27 | 26,527 | 6,292,421 | 12 |
| Jung Kook | 58 | 33.9% | 11 | 28,206 | 5,766,465 | 22 |
| J-Hope | 5 | 2.9% | 2 | 11,197 | 2,229,580 | 13 |
| Jimin | 0 | 0% | 0 | 14,357 | 2,624,624 | 18 |
| Suga | 0 | 0% | 0 | 12,945 | 2,442,797 | 16 |
| Jin | 0 | 0% | 0 | 12,491 | 2,318,893 | 21 |
| RM | 0 | 0% | 0 | 12,004 | 2,345,078 | 10 |
V was read most in 108 of the 171 weeks — more than anyone. But Jung Kook has the higher median week (28,206 against 26,527).
Both are true at once. Leading a week is decided by that week’s peak; a median says what an ordinary week looks like. A member with occasional very large weeks can lead more weeks while sitting lower in a typical one — and that is what the table shows. Neither column is the “real” one.
The streak reported this week belongs to Jin — 131 weeks at number one on MyOnePick. By our count, Jin led 0 of these 171 weeks on the English Wikipedia, with a median week of 12,491 views.
That is not a contradiction of the report. It is two counts of two different things, printed side by side. Voting apps are where fan bases organise; page views are where everyone else goes to find out who someone is. A member can be first in one and not the other for 171 weeks running, and both counts can be correct.
| Step | What we did |
|---|---|
| Source | Wikimedia pageviews API, English Wikipedia, all access, human traffic only |
| Window | 1 June 2023 to 1 September 2026 — 171 complete weeks (Monday start) |
| Page titles | 112 titles in total across 7 members — each member’s article plus every redirect pointing at it, listed by the Wikipedia API, not by us |
| Weeks led | The member with the most views that week. Ties count for everyone tied |
| Comparison group | The 7 members of one group — our choice, see below |
The last row of the main table is there for a reason. Counting only a member’s main article undercounts them, because most readers arrive through a redirect and the pageviews API counts each redirect separately. Two of these members are read six to twelve times more than their main article alone suggests, and one member’s best-known title turned out to be a redirect rather than the article. We ask the Wikipedia API for the full redirect list instead of typing one, and we print how many titles each figure covers.
Measured 5 September 2026. Source: Wikimedia pageviews API and the English Wikipedia API, both public. Fan-vote figure as reported by Star News on 2026-09-05; we did not verify it.
English Wikipedia has moved six of the 100 most-read Korean stars to a different name in the last two years. In every one, the old title still takes most of the reading — 72% to 94% of it, four to 22 months on.
5 September 2026
Fan-vote apps report number ones in streaks of weeks. We counted which BTS member the English Wikipedia read most, week by week, for 171 weeks. V led 108 of them — and Jung Kook still has the higher median week. Both are true.
5 September 2026
Of the 100 most-read Korean stars, the 20 whose article sits under a single word carry a median of 6.5 bracketed titles — Rain (entertainer), Rain (singer), Rain (soldier). The 80 with a full name carry none. Fame does not explain it.
5 September 2026
English Wikipedia moved his article to Jung Kook in March 2025. Seventeen months on, 4.09m of the 5.77m reads about him land on the old title. Of the 30 most-read Korean stars, only he is reached mostly by a dropped name.
5 September 2026 · corrected