Forbes Korea ranks SNSD as Korea’s #1 power celebrity

The results of Forbes Korea’s 8th anniversary “Korea’s Power Celebrity 40” are in, and SNSD has been selected as Korea’s top power celebrity. Figure skater Kim Yuna, who had placed number 1 for the past two years, has now dropped down to number 3. On the other hand, soccer star Park Jisung beat out Kim Yuna for 2nd place, as he took the title of Korea’s representative sports star.

This year’s number one, SNSD, has ranked in the top three for a variety of categories, such as number of articles, TV commercials, and internet searches. According to the Hanteo charts, SNSD sold over 270,000 albums, which is over 20,000 more than 2nd place, which went to Super Junior.

The songs in their album also had about 11,730,000 online downloads, and they ranked 3rd place in the number of articles written, and had filmed a total of 25 advertisements.

It has been analyzed that SNSD has had over 100 billion won in sales through their music, commercials, and TV appearances.  With their activities in the Japanese market, they even further exceed this. Since their Japanese debut through ‘Genie‘ in September, all of their released songs have made it to the Oricon charts.  According to SanK Sports, SNSD made about 120 million won in profits from their Japanese album sales.

Thanks to SNSD’s success, SM Entertainment’s stock has risen in value, as evidenced by the price of a share going up from 5,000 won to 20,000 won in one year. Also, Lee Soo Man’s appraised holdings jumped from 250 billion won last year to 880 billion won this year.

Source: Forbes Korea
credit: chloejn@AllKPop