A non‑existent group was the most “K‑pop” of the quarter.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, the biggest event in the K‑pop industry wasn’t a debut or a comeback at all. The most overwhelming “K‑pop” turned out to belong to a group that didn’t exist, and that truth became the industry’s most uncomfortable mirror.
When closing out the final quarter of 2025, the first name the industry should think of isn’t a person—it’s the fictional girl group Huntrix from a Netflix animated series. Throughout the fourth quarter, the stage where the word “K‑pop” was consumed most fervently worldwide wasn’t a music show or a stadium tour, but a single movie.
The numbers attest to this asymmetry. The film *K-Pop Demon Hunters* surpassed 500 million cumulative views by the end of December, shattering Netflix’s all-time viewership record, and its soundtrack earned RIAA Double Platinum certification in the U.S. in October. It was the first time in film music history that four soundtrack tracks simultaneously charted in the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10. Yet during the same quarter, key indicators of the real Korean idol industry pointed in the exact opposite direction.
In 2025, sales of the Top 400 albums totaled approximately 85.72 million units—a 7.5% decline year-on-year. Only 18 albums surpassed the one-million-unit mark, down from the previous year, with girl groups’ retreat being especially pronounced. The number of female groups achieving annual million-seller status plummeted from 10 to just 6, while the upper ranks were effectively filled by the fan-driven purchasing power of boy groups.
This is the reality behind the “K‑pop crisis theory” that dominated Korean media throughout the fourth quarter. While the genre continues to expand globally, domestic vitality is waning. Both physical album sales and streaming numbers have declined together, and it has become increasingly difficult each year for rookie groups to establish themselves in the market. The sight of a small‑to‑mid‑size agency’s girl group announcing its disbandment just weeks after a comeback is no longer an exception.
The industry's answer was “experience.” In the fourth‑quarter results, the shortfall in album and digital‑music sales was made up by concerts. HYBE’s concert revenue surged to nearly three times the previous year, reaching the several‑hundred‑billion‑won range, and SM’s quarterly concert revenue also posted a growth rate in the high‑30 percent range. Fans now prefer to experience the stage rather than simply own the recordings.
The problem lies in how this shift is transforming the industry’s fundamental structure. While albums and digital music served as entry points for newcomers, tours now channel rewards exclusively to already-proven, large-scale IPs. Winner-takes-all dynamics are accelerating, and the fertile ground for nurturing the next generation is correspondingly thinning. Hidden behind the strong fourth-quarter performance is precisely this structural anemia.
Of course, a counterargument is possible: Huntress’s success isn’t K-pop’s defeat but rather the triumph of the K-pop “format”—and without real-life artists’ songs, choreography, and visual grammar, the film wouldn’t exist at all. That’s valid. Yet this very logic strikes at the heart of the matter. If what the world loved was K-pop’s form, then what does it mean that the entity most efficiently embodying that form wasn’t a living human group, but a virtual character—free of cost, scandal, and military service gaps?
It’s no coincidence that venture capital flooded into virtual idol startups—searching for the “next Demon Hunters”—in the fourth quarter. The market had already placed its bet on the direction of the answer.
The defining event of Q4 2025 was not a single artist or a single dispute, but the moment when the possibility—“the most K-pop thing doesn’t have to be real”—was first imprinted across the entire industry. The domestic market stagnated, the entry point for rookies narrowed, and the industry’s center of gravity shifted toward experience and IP.
The question this quarter posed is brutally simple. If K‑pop ultimately becomes an industry that sells a format rather than people, what have we truly cherished— the person on stage, or the flawless blueprint that resembles that person? The final quarter of 2025 ended without answering it, leaving only the question itself starkly clear.