Earlier this month, an album sung mainly in Japanese landed on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart at No. 43. That's a rare accomplishment for any Japanese artist — and an even less frequent one for a non-Japanese outfit to pull off.
But it's just another entry on a long list of accomplishments for South Korean pop group BTS. Their third Japanese album, "Face Yourself," came out April 4 and quickly climbed the charts. Besides Billboard, it topped the weekly Oricon album ranking with more than 284,000 copies sold (via four physical editions, one version more than AKB48's latest release).
The seven-member group has appeared on (and won) American awards shows, recorded the highest-charting K-pop single and album on Billboard ever, and even impressed my Mom after she saw them on "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve." It's up for debate if K-pop as a whole has achieved mainstream success in the Western world — but BTS unquestionably are South Korea's most successful international act since Psy.