The office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in has congratulated K-pop boy band BTS for topping the Billboard 200 chart again.
BTS (Big Hit Entertainment)
“Huge congratulations to @BTS_twt on topping the @billboard 200 for a second time! #ARMY @USBTSARMY,” read the tweet posted by the president’s office.
According to Billboard, “Love Yourself: Answer,” the band’s latest album released on Aug. 24, topped the chart in the week ending Aug. 30 with 185,000 equivalent album units based on data from Nielsen Music.
BTS first topped Billboard 200 in May with their album “Love Yourself: Tear, which garnered 135,000 equivalent album units.
Of the 185,000 equivalent album units for “Love Yourself: Answer,” 141,000 are from traditional album sales, 25,000 from streaming equivalent albums (SEA) and 19,000 track equivalent albums (TEA).
In South Korea, the album sold 868,052 copies in the first week from Aug. 24 to 30 based on the Hanteo Music Chart.
“Love Yourself: Answer” contains the carrier track “IDOL.” The music video for the song was earlier declared by YouTube as the most watched in the first 24 hours with over 45 million views.
Billboard said that the album’s first week sales are the biggest for BTS and the K-pop genre, and the third largest sales week for a pop album in 2018.
It added that BTS became the first pop act since 2014 with two albums in the No. 1 positions in less than one year.