#wikidata

Sun Oct 04 — Of the 243 Korean titles we track on Netflix charts, 76 share an exact English name with a film or series from another country. Desire is used by sixteen. We measured our own blind spot and are printing it.

Tue Sep 22 — Among groups with a recorded end date on Wikidata, Korean groups' median lifespan is 3 years against 5-7 for Japan, the US and the UK. Not a ranking — the Korean cohort was founded a median 31 years later than the UK's.

Thu Sep 10 — One morning brought two announcements: a BLACKPINK member fronting an iPhone camera, a BIGBANG member fronting McDonald's. Our brand panel covered luxury, jewellery, fashion and cars — not phones, not burgers. So we added both.

Wed Sep 09 — Korean entertainment labels a couple by the years between them: 14 younger, 9 younger, 9 younger, in one morning. We measured the years inside the groups instead. The median spread from oldest to youngest member is 4 years.

Wed Sep 09 — Fans are organising around 13 October. We hold full birth dates for 9,249 Korean entertainers, so we counted every calendar day. That date holds 26 people, ranking 137th of 366. Two of the busiest single days are artefacts we can name.

Wed Sep 09 — We sorted every one of the 428 Korean music groups on Wikidata by the sex recorded for each member. 185 are all-men, 182 all-women, 12 mixed. But 127 groups still contain a member with no sex recorded, so the mixed number can only go up.

Fri Sep 04 — We counted 1,303 members of 263 K-pop groups. Put on a per-day footing, March runs at 1.20 times an even month and July at 0.69. Scattering the same birthdays evenly 10,000 times produced a gap that wide 1.1% of the time.

Thu Sep 03 — Across 9,246 Korean entertainers, the 992 credited with both singing and acting sit in a median of 10 Wikipedia language editions, against 1 for either alone. Hold that count fixed and actors are still opened more often.

Mon Aug 31 — We built a K-pop readership panel from Wikidata: 2,372 Korean acts with a music occupation. The single most-read person on it is an actor. 232 names — 9.8% — also act, and they take 29.3% of every read.

Fri Aug 28 — Seoul Institute of the Arts has 352 people in our roster, more than any school. Twenty-eight are in a group. School of Performing Arts Seoul has 102.

Fri Aug 28 — Seoul Institute of the Arts has more alumni in our Netflix set than any school. Their titles reach a median of 16 countries. Dongguk's reach 41.5.

Sat Aug 22 — Jimin and Jungkook were born in Busan, Suga and V in Daegu, and not one of the seven in Seoul. Busan gave nine of the 123 most-read Korean stars, Daegu four, Seoul fifty.

Sat Aug 22 — English saju sites read one chart at a time, so nobody has a denominator. We built one: 9,249 Korean entertainers with a birth date on record to the day. One of our four tests crossed the chance line; here is what we did to kill it.

Sat Aug 08 — Of 718 actors with two or more charting Korean titles, 62.4% have worked in both film and series. If format meant nothing, the figure would be 73.8%. The gap is the size of the wall, and it is smaller than reputation suggests.

Sat Aug 08 — Across 666 charting Korean titles there are 14,144 pairs of actors who have shared a production. 268 of them have done it more than once. Shuffle the same casts at random and you get about 214. The repertory company is mostly not there.

Sat Aug 08 — Four countries, one identical decline: new group debuts look 69% down since 2017 in Korea, and just as far down in Japan, America and Britain. What we had measured was not the industry but how fast Wikidata records a new group.

Sat Aug 08 — Wikidata records no cast at all for 266 of 901 Korean titles. Of the 635 that have any, the median series lists five names. What that limits.

Fri Aug 07 — Of 666 Korean titles with a recorded cast, 649 form a single connected body through shared actors. We expected a few very busy people to be holding it together. Take out the 100 busiest and 94.5% is still one piece.

Fri Aug 07 — Across 86 groups whose full membership can be measured, the members' pages were opened 3.88 times as often as the group's. Newer groups looked like the opposite until we checked why: Wikidata lists two members for Fromis 9.

Fri Aug 07 — Across 312 Korean productions with five or more recorded cast, the median has 16.7% of its cast appearing in nothing else that charted. The spread runs from 0% to 89%, and it separates prestige work from reality and youth casting.