It would be easy to assume that BTS must have had the biggest streaming track in South Korea in the first half of this year, such has been the scale of their comeback.
Nope. BTS had the biggest-selling album of that period according to the Korea Popmusic Industry Association, but the most-streamed track was ‘Landing In Love’ by singer-songwriter Hanroro.
It’s an interesting story, because Hanroro isn’t your typical K-Pop artist. Music Ally recently interviewed Beautiful Noise A&R Chad Won for our upcoming South Korea country profile, and he filled us in.
“Currently in Korea, a sensibility known in Japan as ‘menhera’ is dominantly popular. While this word originally refers to an unstable and sick mental state, it is now used more as an aesthetic representing unstable youth,” said Won.
“Hanroro’s work ‘Grapefruit Apricot Club’ and her hit song ‘0+0’ pierce through this exact point, garnering deep empathy from many by incorporating literary expressions loved by Korean Gen Z, shocking content, and allusions to suicide.”
For the same country profile, Chili Music Korea president Jun-sang Lee described Hanroro as an “indie singer-songwriter reshaping Korea’s music scene, dominating streaming charts, selling out arenas and landing on bestseller lists simultaneously”.
She has won endorsements from BTS’s RM and Le Sserafim, and last month was named as one of the 2026 class for YouTube’s emerging-artists program Foundry.
