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An Entirely New Top 20
South Korea’s 20 most popular trending videos on YouTube were all new entries on Sept. 27 compared with the platform’s Sept. 20 snapshot, reflecting a rapid turnover driven largely by music and gaming content.
Among 30 videos reviewed, 12 were classified as music and 11 as gaming. The remaining entries included three entertainment videos, two sports videos, one film and animation video, and one news and politics video. Seven were YouTube Shorts.
Music Leads the Top 10
The No. 1 video was PATEKO’s music Short “Toy,” which had 622,031 views and 10,267 likes after being posted Sept. 23. Movie Think ranked second with a 17-minute breakdown of three post-credits scenes and plot clues from “Avengers: Endgame Encore,” drawing more than 2.5 million views.
A nearly hourlong gaming video from Kim Sung-hyun’s ALTUBE channel placed third. In it, the creator takes on a powerful artificial intelligence player called Pluto. The video had more than 1.5 million views. SOOSOJIN’s “RAIN” Short ranked fourth with 178,816 views.
Gaming creator GAMST took fifth place with a video about spending 28 million won in the soccer game FC Online. It recorded 893,588 views. The Korean term used in the title refers to spending real money on in-game purchases, a familiar feature of South Korea’s highly developed online gaming culture.
“Pinocchio” by Release ranked sixth, followed by another FC Online gaming video from Tube Kim Min-kyo. BOYNEXTDOOR member RIWOO’s cover of Japanese singer tuki.’s “Bansanka” was eighth, recording 415,315 views and 34,440 likes. Gaming channel Goemuljwi placed ninth, while THEBLACKLABEL’s Short for ALLDAY PROJECT’s “DO IT LIKE THIS” music video ranked 10th with more than 6 million views, the highest view count among the top 10.
BTS, Taylor Swift and Esports
Gaming videos occupied four of the next five positions. Lee Sang-ho ranked 11th with an FC Online video, and Hyean placed 13th with a horror game recreating South Korea in the 2000s. Waldokun’s 80-minute gaming video came in at No. 15. Taylor Swift’s “Babylon” ranked 12th with more than 2.3 million views, while Feel Kim’s “To Be Free” placed 14th.
BTS ranked 16th with the official music video for “Merry Go Round.” The video had more than 5.2 million views and 620,018 likes, by far the largest like total among the listed top 20.
Sports videos at Nos. 17 and 19 focused on competitive gaming, including an 11-year-old “Puyo Puyo” player and veteran arcade gamers winning an Asian Games gold medal. UNIS’ “Milky Way” ranked 18th, and K-pop group LIGHTSUM’s Japanese-language music video “Doshite” placed 20th with more than 1.7 million views.
American Entertainment Shares the Chart
The appearance of Swift and an “Avengers: Endgame” analysis alongside K-pop acts and Korean gaming creators shows how South Korea’s YouTube audience moves between American entertainment and locally produced content. The chart also illustrates the global reach of Korean music: BTS’ video generated millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes within days of its release.
How the Ranking Was Compiled
The ranking was reconstructed from South Korea’s trending-video list released through the YouTube Data API as of Sept. 27, 2026. Changes were measured against the Sept. 20 list. The data did not include subscriber totals or revenue.
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