Hanteo Chart Denies Rumors Of Manipulation Of Album Sales Numbers

Album sales statistics site Hanteo Chart has announced plans to take legal action following allegations that they had fabricated sales numbers.

On November 3, Hanteo Chart issued the following statement:

Hello, this is Hanteo Chart.

Since last week, we have received many inquiries about the album sales numbers for a particular artist.

We have taken a while to respond in order to confirm this exactly, and we ask for your understanding because of that.

We carried out a detailed examination of the related data, and we confirmed that the amount was from purchases in over 20 countries.

There are many malicious posts online including slander, defamation, and rumors because of this issue.

It is clearly an illegal act to spread unverified information or start malicious rumors and insult a particular group or person.

The posts in question can have a negative effect on the K-pop industry and harm the artists, their fandom, and people in the industry too.

Our company believes we must aim to ensure that no one experiences such harm.

We have collected a large amount of evidence through reports from many fans and our own monitoring, and our legal team is preparing a strong legal response to this.

We plan to continue to respond strongly to malicious actions, for the sake of a better future for K-pop.

We ask for our users’ continued interest and cooperation so that we can create a beautiful K-pop culture.

On top of that, Hanteo Chart automatically aggregates data from over 1,000 online and offline stores in Korea and overseas in order to publish our album chart.

We state that there is a clear difference between Hanteo Chart and other charts in terms of our family company subscriber number, aggregation method, and system.

Thank you.

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