In December 2018, BTS surpassed 10 million albums sold, setting the record for reaching that milestone in the shortest span of time (5+1⁄2 years) among all Korean acts to have debuted since 2000, with five million of those albums being sold in South Korea that year alone.

[1] By April 2020, the group had sold over 20 million physical albums in South Korea, becoming the best-selling Korean act of all time in less than seven years.

[5] To wrap up the year, BTS made their Japanese debut in December with their first Japanese-language studio album Wake Up.

It debuted at number 43 on the Billboard 200 with 12,000 album-equivalent units,[10] making it the third-highest-charting Japanese album in the history of the chart.

[16] The EP became the best-selling album in South Korean history, selling nearly 3.4 million copies in two months.

[17] They broke the all-time domestic sales record again with their fourth Korean studio album, Map of the Soul: 7, which sold 4.1 million copies in less than nine days since its release in early 2020[18] and gave BTS their fourth US number-one album.