According to Hanteo Chart, a real-time album sales website in South Korea, Jimin’s debut solo album FACE sold 1,021,532 physical copies globally on March 24. This remarkable achievement makes Jimin the first solo artist from Korea to sell over a million copies in a single day and also puts him among the biggest day-one openings ever recorded in the country.
Trot singer Lim Young Woong held the record previously by selling 940,624 copies of his debut solo album IM HERO last year. Currently, FACE has secured the ninth position among the biggest-ever first-day sales for Korean albums.
Despite K-pop soloists tending to sell fewer copies than groups, Jimin’s sales prove to be significant competition. BTS holds the record for the biggest 24-hour opening with 2020’s Map of the Soul: 7, selling over 2.65 million copies. Top K-pop groups such as TOMORROW X TOGETHER, SEVENTEEN, Stray Kids, and BLACKPINK rank in the Top 10 among first-day Korean album sales.
Jimin’s Face is likely to become one of the top-selling albums this year
Jimin’s FACE album will likely become one of Korea’s top-selling albums in 2023 due to high global interest in the solo project.
According to Hanteo, FACE’s “regular” and “Weverse Version” sold 768,575 and 252,957 copies, respectively. HYBE’s Weverse platform sells the “Weverse Version,” which includes merchandise and enables fan communication. While both versions feature supplementary items like photo cards, the “Weverse Version” typically comes in a thinner box. It contains a QR code for streaming the music instead of a physical CD.
Although Jimin hasn’t released as much solo music as some of his BTS bandmates, the album features the pre-release buzz track “Set Me Free Pt.2” and lead single “Like Crazy,” showcasing a vocally powerful performance with unexpected soundscapes of gospel-inflected trap-pop and slinky, synth-pop. The album’s larger story focuses on confronting one’s anxieties and struggles, allowing Jimin to share a part of himself beyond his captivating on-stage persona.
Although Hanteo Chart tracks physical album sales globally, the Billboard charts include physical and streaming sales, but only in the United States. The latest artist to surpass Jimin’s first-day sales in the U.S. was Taylor Swift, whose album “Midnights,” released in late 2022, sold 1.578 million units in its first week.
