The month of May and June showed the strong influence of K-pop artists among Filipino Facebook users. Blueprint.PH’s deep-dive scan* for top South Korean artists showed which South Korean artists have the most interactions and the topmost engaging posts as expressed by the 80 million Filipino Facebook users.
Global K-pop superstars top the charts
On the top spot is BTS or Bangtan Sonyeondan with a 5.5 million engagement score from 14988 posts. BTS, the seven-member group of RM, Suga, Jin, Jhope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook maintained the top spot for June. The top engaging post for BTS was from their official Facebook account, with this message “You shine brighter than anyone, army”, which are promo photos for BTS’s 2021 Muster fan meet with an engagement score of 240,407.5. The fan meet entitled Sowoozoo was a paid online concert witnessed by 1.3 million ticket buyers from 245 countries.
The most engaging local post related to BTS is from a local influencer, Anthony Leodones on his post about the BTS McDonalds Meal, with an engagement score of 38,368.0.
Following BTS is the all-girl group Twice. For June 2021, Twice has an engagement score of 3.2 million, from 4015 posts for June. The all-girl group is composed of nine members, namely:Jihyo, Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Momo, Sana, Mina, Dahyun, Chaeyoung, and Tzuyu. They released a new song Alcohol-Free, now with more than 138 million views on Youtube since its release on June 11. The top engaging post for Twice is from their official Facebook page, JYP Twice, a post, MELODY PROJECT: “ME! (Taylor Swift)” Cover by TZUYU (Feat. Bang Chan of Stray Kids) with an engagement score of 43,943.4
Locally, the top engagement post with an engagement score of 3582 is from local influencer/fan group, TwicersPh on Bang Chan of Stray Kids listened to “Alcohol-Free” on his vlive earlier! Twice and Stray Kids are both under JYP Entertainment.
On Number 3 spot is Blackpink, a global all-girl group from South Korea which have been topping charts and music videos, and consistently on the Top 3 of Blueprint.PH’s k-pop trending artists. Composed of ladies, Jisoo, Rosé, Jennie, and Lisa, Blackpink has an engagement score of 1.7 million from 3868 posts for June 2021.
The top engaging post for Blackpink is the teaser poster for their upcoming movie with this post, with an engagement score of 132,314.1: BLACKPINK 5th ANNIVERSARY [4+1] THE MOVIE TEASER POSTER; BLACKPINK THE MOVIE 2021.08 COMING SOON; Celebrate 5 years of BLACKPINK in over 100 countries worldwide!
Locally, the top engaging post with a score of 72,183.4 is from the blog page Ruru Manoban with this post: BLACKPINK niyo global ambassador ng chanel, celine, bvlgari, ysl, tiffany & co. at dior pero nag-aagawan sa banig.
At number 4 is Exo with an engagement score of 329,000 from 2730 posts. Exo is composed of members Suho, Xiumin, Lay, Baekhyun, Chen, Chanyeol, D.O., Kai, and Sehun. They released a special album in June and the last time they released an album was in November 2020. The new song Don’t Fight the Feeling which premiered on June 7 has more than 77 million views to date on YouTube. The highest engaging post for Exo was from an article in Soompi, with an engagement score of 12,390.8, on Exo member D.O.’s upcoming album:
Following Exo, is Seventeen, with an engagement score of 267,774 from 1271 posts. Seventeen a 13 member group composed of S.coups, Wonwoo, Mingyu, Vernon (the hip-hop unit); Woozi, Jeonghan, Joshua, DK, Seungkwan (the vocal unit);Hoshi, Jun, The8, Dino(the performance unit) and has been on the monthly top 10 consistently. Seventeen released their new lead song in June entitled Ready to Love, now with nearly 35,000,000 views on Youtube. The most engaging post for Seventeen was from their fansite Seventeenism,
Rookie groups joining the top 10
Rookie group TXT is at number 6 with a 107,541 engagement score. TXT entered the top 10 for June, at number 3. Composed of Taehyun, Beomgyu, Soobin, Yeonjun, and Heuning Kai, TXT or Tomorrow X Together released their new album in May. The top engaging post, with an engagement score of 11,924.2, is the cover image of the hit song <0X1=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) from their management’s official page Big Hit. This song has had more than 33 million views on YouTube since its release at the end of May.
At number 7 is a newcomer on the top 10 and is another rookie group, Stray kids with an engagement score of 107,541 from a total of 371 posts. Stray Kids is an all-male kpop idol group composed of 8 members: Bang Chan, Lee, Know, Changbin, Hyunjin, Han, Felix, Seungmin, andI.N. Stray Kids’s most engaging posts are the same as Twice, the cover of Twice’s Tyuzu of Taylor Swift’s Me with Stray Kids’s Bang Chan. Locally, the top engaging post for Stray Kids is from the page TwicersPh with an engagement score of 2375. : Congratulations to Stray Kids for winning kingdom! We’re so proud of you guys! 
IU, the only soloist on this list is still strong and consistent at number 8 with an engagement score of 75,863 from a total of 545 posts. The top engaging post for IU is from the entertainment FB page, Allkpop, which tells about IU’s purchase of her multi-million dollar new home.
Another strong and consistent kpop group in our monthly top 10 is NCT Dream is at number 9 with an engagement score of 73,562 from 987 posts. Composed of Mark, Renjun, Jeno, Haechan, Jaemin, Chenle, and Jisung, the top engaging post for NCT is from Soompi for topping the iTunes chart all over the world with their repackaged song, “Hello Future”. Since its premiere on June 28, Hello Future has had more than 54 million views on YouTube.
Coming from behind at number 10, is Got7 with 59,258 engagement scores from 500 posts. Got7, composed of seven men did not renew their contract with their former management, JYP. Instead, the members Jay B, Mark, Jackson, Jinyoung, Youngjae, BamBam, and Yugyeom, continued as solo artists. The top engaging post for Got7 is from AllKpop with this message: Both Yugyeom and BamBam make the GOT7 ending handsign pose after their ‘M Countdown’ performances
*Methodology:
Blueprint.PH listed the Kpop groups from the trending keywords list and from other social media sources. Data gathering was held from June 1 to June 30, 2021.
The list was scanned using a proprietary and specialized NLP (natural language processing) SEARCH engine. For each keyword or phrase we search, on the average, we scan about 2 petabytes of data equivalent to 2 million gigabytes of data over Facebook that mentions the keyword.
The main source of data are publicly available Facebook data from the Philippines. Trends, commentaries, charts, tables and other data presented are from Facebook platform.
There are no personal nor demographic data, and data was acquired through observation and not solicitation.
The data was organized chronologically by engagement score. Engagement score is computed as: (Comments X 0.1)+(reactions x 0.1) + shares.