Welche K-Pop Alben wurden in 2022 am meisten verkauft?

The year 2022 is not quite over yet, but not much is missing! Do you feel like taking a look back at the past months with us? Once again, countless new albums have been released; both by experienced and new K-Pop artists who just debuted this year.

We wondered which albums from 2022 sold the best! Are you curious too? Then you've come to the right place! We took a look at the list of best-selling albums in South Korea, which lists all the albums that sold one million copies or more in South Korea.

Which albums made the list this year? Which artist is on it for the first time? Which albums may have even sold over two million copies? We answer these questions and more here!

Albums from 2022 that sold more than one million copies.
Which artists have cracked the 1 million mark most often?
Which albums have the highest sales?
Nolae's favorites

Albums from 2022 that sold more than one million copies.

One million to two million copies of these albums were sold:

Ateez 2022 Album The World Ep.1 : Movement Poster

As you can see, only a dozen albums reached this milestone this year. Even for artists who regularly top the charts, it's not easy to sell this many copies. Several of the groups that made the list this year are doing it for the first time, even though they've been successful on stage for a few years. This is the case, for example, with Ateez, Twice, ITZY or aespa.

It's probably especially striking that IVE is included, as the girl group only debuted in December 2021. There's no other group that reached this milestone as quickly after their debut as they did!

Jin also stands out with his solo album "The Astronaut". The album was just released on October 28, but has already made it to the list. So far, no solo album has reached the one million mark so quickly!

And even fewer albums from 2022 have cracked the two million mark:

Although only five albums from this year made it this far, this is actually more than in previous years! In 2021 there were only four (BTS, NCT 127, NCT Dream & Seventeen) and from 2020 to 2017 even only one or two albums from BTS each.

"BTS - Love Yourself: Her" in 2017, by the way, was the first album in many years to sell over two million copies. Before that, the last entry was the album "Let Me Love" by the singer Jo Sung Mo from 2000! Due to the fact that only BTS albums made it into the list in the following years, we can once again clearly see the incredible success of the boy band.

This also applies to the one million mark: in 2016, BTS were the first in 15 years to make it into the list of albums that sold more than one million copies. Before them, the last album to do so was "Chapter 4" by 1st Generation boy band g.o.d in 2001.

Which artists have cracked the 1 million mark most often?

After first taking a look specifically at 2022, let's now take a look at which artists have made it into the list of best-selling albums most often over the years! (As of this writing, November 2022).

We're referring here to the period from 2016 to the present, so we'll leave out the entries from 2001 and earlier.

The first place is clearly occupied by BTS with 11 albums! This is followed by Seventeen in second place with seven albums. Third place is shared by the two NCT sub-units NCT Dream and NCT 127 with four albums each. From there on, they are all close behind:

3 albums: NCT (group albums), Stray Kids & TXT

2 albums: Blackpink, Enhypen, EXO & Baekhyun (EXO)

1 album: Twice, ATEEZ, aespa, ITZY, IVE, Lim Young Woong & Jin

Which albums have the highest sales?

As you know now, there are several albums that have sold more than two million copies. "Over two million copies" is pretty vague, though, isn't it? So let's take a quick look at the actual numbers now:

The best-selling album in South Korea is currently "BTS - Map of the Soul: 7". 5,002,919 million copies sold in South Korea! The second best-selling album is "BTS - Map of the Soul: Persona" (2019) with 4.5 million copies sold, followed by "BTS - BE" (2020) with 3.7 million copies sold.

The best-selling album from 2022 is "BTS - Proof" with 3.3 million copies sold. It currently ranks fourth among the best-selling albums. In fact, the top eight spots are all occupied by BTS!

On place 9 and 10 are older albums: "Wrongful Encounter" by Kim Gun Mo (1995) with 2.86 million albums sold & "When Love Passes By" by Lee Moon Sae (1987) with 2.85 million albums sold. Number 11 is currently occupied by an album from 2022: "Face the Sun" by Seventeen with 2.82 million albums sold!

As you can see, albums from 2022 are also very high in the overall list.

Nolae's favorites

Many of the best-selling albums in this list probably also have a permanent place in the hearts of many fans. And of course, we've listened to some of these albums up and down as well! But obviously there are so many more masterpieces, which have been released this year and have inspired us.

To conclude, we would like to introduce you to our favorites. They were our personal highlight this year!

Kep1er - DOUBLAST
The second album of the young girl group Kep1er is definitely one of our favorite summer albums of this year! The B-Side "Le Voya9e" is our favorite track.

Dreamcatcher - Apocalypse: Save Us
We must have flipped through this album countless times because the images are so beautiful. We especially loved the hologram postcard set from the limited version!

The Boyz - Be Aware
The title track "Whisper" is a real catchy tune that keeps coming back!

Enhypen - Dimension: Answer
This album came out at the very beginning of the year, but has remained in our favorites list to this day! It's a repackage of Dimension: Dilemma so besides new tracks like the title track "Blessed-Cursed" it also contains the previous hit "Tamed-Dashed"!

Le sserafim - Fearless
We have been eagerly awaiting Le sserafim's debut album and we were not disappointed! We can't decide if we like the title track "Fearless" or the B-side "Blue Flame" better.

Did any of our favorites make it into your collection too? What albums did you buy this year? Tell us!

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