SEVENTEEN Sell Over 4.5 Million Copies Of ‘FML’ Album Worldwide For Record-Breaking Week In Korea

While SEVENTEEN has been historic in their K-pop run as an underdog boy band of 13 members-turned-one of South Korea’s biggest success stories, the group has reached a milestone putting them in their own league.

In its first week available, SEVENTEEN’s new EP titled FML: The 10th Mini Album sold 4,550,214 physical copies worldwide, according to South Korea’s real-time album sales website Hanteo Chart. The massive amount makes the K-pop group the only artist in the chart’s history to sell more than four million albums in a week.

Upon release, SEVENTEEN was already smashing records when FML sold over 3.9 million units in the first 24 hours, making them the first-ever artist to surpass the three-million mark on Day 1 of release in Hanteo’s chart history.

In addition to its paramount first week, FML also became the best-selling album ever on the Hanteo Chart, surpassing BTS’ 2020 album Map of the Soul: 7, which has a total of 4.2 million copies sold worldwide after selling nearly 3.4 million copies its first week.

Before FML, the PLEDIS Entertainment boy band already had some of the Hanteo Chart’s best-selling albums to date, with their 2022 full-length album Face the Sun selling more than 2.2 million copies so far while 2021 EP Attacca sold just over two million.

Following a year of record-breaking from K-pop artists, including BTS’ Jimin becoming the first solo star to sell over a million copies in one day, the vast numbers show the ongoing significance of physical products in South Korea, the seventh-largest music industry in the world according to the latest report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Like all K-pop albums, FML came in different versions and included special goodies inside, like special photos and trading photo cards of the individual members. Naturally with SEVENTEEN’s 13 members, the number of fans looking to get items or versions for the different members boosted interest for the latest release from S.Coups, Jeonghan, Joshua, Hoshi, Jun, Wonwoo, DK, Woozi, Mingyu, The8, Seungkwan, Vernon and Dino.

After this first week, SEVENTEEN’s FML will automatically rank as Korea’s best-selling album of 2023, surpassing current leader Tomorrow X Together’s The Name Chapter: Temptation, which has reported more than 2.5 million sales as of March. The interest for this release grew from the group bringing two lead singles for the EP, the epically energetic team anthem “Super” and the moving, uplifting hip-hop “F*ck My Life.”