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South Korea
This Week in AsiaLifestyle & Culture

BTS’ Jin lifts lid on K-pop’s sajaegi chart manipulation scandal

  • Unethical methods of boosting a song’s ranking, such as using bots, are believed to be common in South Korea’s music industry
  • While no names have been directly associated with the practice, Jin’s speech at the MAMA Awards has renewed discussion about it

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V, Suga, Jin and Jungkook from South Korean boy band BTS on the red carpet during the MAMA Awards in Nagoya, Japan on December 4. Photo: Reuters
David D. Lee
South Korean superstar boy band BTS may have scooped nine awards – including the grand prize of Album of the Year – at the Mnet Asian Music Awards on December 4, but what really got the audience talking was band member Jin’s speech about the K-pop industry’s use of sajaegi , or chart manipulation.
How about creating music using more honest means?
Jin from BTS
“How about creating music using more honest means? I wish for the advent of an era in which everybody makes and appreciates good music,” he said after BTS won Song of the Year at the awards.

Chart manipulation refers to unethical methods to boost a record’s chart ranking online, such as the use of algorithm-driven bots to repeatedly stream songs on devices – artificially boosting the number of times a song has been played.

According to a photo of a sheet with cost estimates posted on social media by a person in the entertainment industry, it supposedly costs 250 million Korean won (US$211,000) per day to keep a song in the top 50 of a music chart.

Sajaegi is widely believed to be common in the industry, as artists who remain highly ranked on the charts will be paid handsome sums to headline events and music festivals.

Under Korean law, an individual caught committing such malpractice can face up to two years in prison or 20 million won in penalties. However, no names have been directly associated with the act, as investigations into the matter have fallen short of producing any hard evidence of such crime.

In 2015, in a scandal that saw the term trend worldwide, the head of JYP Entertainment – one of South Korea’s “Big Three” entertainment labels – revealed that he possessed a recording of someone in the industry admitting to chart manipulation and saying that “six out of the top 10 artists in the music charts” at the time used such tactics.

It was not until this November, four years after the controversy first emerged, that several artists’ names were connected with it. Park Kyung, a music producer and member of boy band Block B, sarcastically said on Twitter that he wanted to “hoard up” his songs “like Vibe, Song Ha-ye, Lim Jae-hyun, Jeon Sang-keun, Jang Deok-cheol and Hwang In-wook”.

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