K-POP Ends Year Dominating Year-End Voting, Solo Activities Also Rising: Highlights of K-POP Artists’ 2025 Performances

The 2025 K-POP market concluded as a highly active year thanks to the performances of key artists such as PLAVE and STRAYKIZ. Recent voting results and the subsequent success in solo activities serve as proof of this. PLAVE secured first place in the male group category of StarTrend’s daily vote on its music review website, amassing 267,030 votes. Throughout last year, PLAVE demonstrated its strength by winning multiple major awards, including the Golden Disk Popular Award at the 39th Golden Disc Awards, Artist of the Year at the 32nd Hanteo Music Awards, and Fan & Star Choice Award at the 2025 The Fact Music Awards. Fans expressed pride by saying, “As expected from PLAVE,” and expectations for their activities in 2026 are growing. STRAYKIZ won the final voting round of “2025 BIGC Choice of the Year” organized by the entertainment tech platform BIGC. This fan-participatory event aimed to select the representative K-POP group of 2025 and featured intense competition over approximately two weeks. As a reward for first place, STRAYKIZ received the privilege of airing video advertisements at Art Canvas in Hongdae입구 Station in Seoul for 15 days. A total of 10 groups were competing in this voting, with the top 5 from “2025 My Choice: Next Icon” and “2025 My Choice: Best Idol” held in December advancing to the final round. In StarTrend’s vote, other groups also showed strong popularity, with FORESTELLLA coming in second with 129,039 votes and RAPEX in third with 29,956 votes. Meanwhile, Yves, a former member of the girl group LOONA, expanded her career into solo activities. LOONA disbanded in December 2022 when all 12 members left their agency, BlockBerry Creative. Yves (real name Ha Sooyoung) made her solo debut last year and is currently on a North American tour. She has 716,500 monthly listeners on Spotify, 751,000 followers on Instagram, and 188,600 followers on TikTok. Yves’s fandom is named “Engdu,” a term created by her fans themselves. It combines the Korean exclamation “Eung?” used when feeling surprised or curious with “yeondu,” which refers to the yellow-green color favored by Yves. The name is also similar to the Korean word for cherry and maintains the fruit-related imagery associated with the apple symbol used during LOONA’s activities. After performing in Europe in December, Yves started her North American tour on January 16 in Canada. The tour schedule includes stops in Brooklyn, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with the final show taking place on February 4 at the Pantagruel Theater in Tacoma. Tickets cost $40 and can be purchased through Ticketmaster. The Tacoma performance begins at 7:30 p.m., with doors opening at 6 p.m. Yves stated that the setlist for the North American tour differs from that of the European tour and was specially prepared for American fans. It consists of original songs, covers, and songs that fans can sing along to, aiming to create “an unpredictable yet enjoyable performance.” In the K-POP market, the continuous performances of representative groups like PLAVE and STRAYKIZ, along with the growth of solo artists such as Yves, are becoming new pillars for the global expansion of K-POP.