A trending list ranks by how much something grew. We ran that measure over 3,253 Korean stars using English Wikipedia readers, 2026-07-24 to 2026-08-22. Then we did it again 5 more times, each time refusing to rank anyone below a minimum daily readership. Across 6 floors there were 3 different number ones.
| Minimum daily readers | People eligible | Number one | Their growth | Their daily average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| no floor | 3,250 | Choi Yu-jin | 654x | 61 |
| 50 | 1,562 | Choi Yu-jin | 654x | 61 |
| 100 | 1,079 | Choi Yu-ju | 36.4x | 301 |
| 300 | 472 | Choi Yu-ju | 36.4x | 301 |
| 1,000 | 109 | Ha Young (actress) | 6.26x | 10,835 |
| 3,000 | 10 | Ha Young (actress) | 6.26x | 10,835 |
The top of an unfiltered surge list is an arithmetic artefact. With no floor, first place went from 1 reader in the first week to 654 in the last — 654x. A person who went from 5,000 readers to 15,000 gained far more attention and ranks nowhere near the top, because 3x is a smaller number than 654x.
None of these floors is the correct one. A low floor answers “who changed the most, relative to themselves”. A high floor answers “who moved the most attention”. Those are different questions, and a list that does not say which floor it used has not answered either.
Raising the minimum does not just change the winner — it removes most of the field. At no floor we can rank 3,250 people. At a floor of 3,000 daily readers, 10 remain. The people who drop out have not become less interesting; we simply cannot measure their growth without dividing by a very small number.
Below are the people whose last week ran furthest above their own 30-day average, counted only among those who clear a floor, so the ratios are not being manufactured by a small base.
| Name | Daily average | Last week vs their own average |
|---|---|---|
| Hong Min-gi | 789 | 3.59x |
| Go Ara | 798 | 3.3x |
| Tarzzan | 329 | 2.62x |
| Choi Yu-ju | 301 | 2.57x |
| NCT 127 | 725 | 2.24x |
| Meovv | 926 | 1.93x |
| BigBang (South Korean band) | 1,838 | 1.92x |
| Kim Young-ok | 361 | 1.92x |
| Eric Nam | 2,957 | 0.41x |
| Baek Sun-ho | 580 | 0.37x |
| Cha Ye-ryun | 576 | 0.37x |
| Jin Seon-kyu | 1,273 | 0.25x |
| Park Bo-kyung | 1,331 | 0.17x |
| Roster | Names |
|---|---|
| K-pop roster | 2,372 |
| Actor roster | 1,113 |
| Names in both, with identical figures | 232 |
| Names in both whose figures disagreed | 0 |
| People after merging | 3,253 |
The two rosters overlap. Every one of the 232 shared names carried the same reader figures in both, so merging them was safe — and necessary, because without it those people would have been ranked twice in the same list.
Source: Wikimedia Pageviews API (en.wikipedia, all-access, user). Window 2026-07-24 to 2026-08-22 (30 days). The article behind this →
We ranked 3,253 Korean stars by the same surge measure a trending list uses. The top result rose 654x — from one English Wikipedia reader in week one to 654 in week four. Put a floor under it and the top falls to 6.26x.
4 September 2026