K-pop supergroup BTS have rapidly become one of the most popular boybands in the world, but it looks like the members have a lot of star power as individuals too.
The band are used to breaking records: they have dozens under their belt, including the fastest time to reach one million followers on TikTok and becoming the first K-pop group to perform on a major US awards show, and now one of its seven members Jungkook has broken a record of his own.
Thanks to his 2018 solo single Euphoria re-entering the US charts this week, he has just become the longest-charting K-pop solo artist, racking up an impressive 26 weeks near the top of the pops.
The record was previously held by Jennie with track Solo.
In total, Euphoria has sold more than four million international copies, making it the best-selling B-side in K-pop history, too.
Check out this photo gallery of BTS through the years:
Euphoria’s new record isn’t the only accolade Jungkook has achieved.
Just this month he broke the record for becoming the only person to receive more than two million likes on five of his Twitter posts, showing that his powers extend far beyond music.
And it looks as though it will continue to be a record-breaking year for him, as he was also named the most-searched Idol on Google and YouTube for 2020 so far, a title he also held in 2019.
K-pop is incredibly popular in the GCC, and so Jungkook has many fans in the Gulf.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how the K-pop craze first arrived in the UAE. But it’s been around for a while – K-pop bands such as Super Junior, Big Bang, 2ne1, SHINee and TVXQ were big in the mid-2000s, after becoming popular on YouTube.
One of the first major K-pop performances in the UAE was in 2011, when pop star Seo In-young and girl group Nine Muses performed as part of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix celebrations. Five years later, there was the game-changing KCON held at du Arena.
Inside Abu Dhabi's K-pop academy:
The event brought big names to town, such as BTS (who were less famous then but still a big deal) and solo artists Taeyeon (formerly of Girls Generation) and Kyuhyun (a former member of Super Junior). It was also the same year the Korean Cultural Centre opened in the capital.
