Red Velvet's Irene Tops K-POPIT BOARD After YSL Beauty Seongsu Event

Red Velvet's Irene is riding one of her biggest buzz spikes in months, powered by a beauty brand event in Seoul and a viral web variety appearance with rapper Lee Young-ji.

On Sept. 4, the K-POP analytics tracker K-POPIT BOARD showed Irene ranked No. 1 in both domestic and global buzz.

Her domestic Power (PWR) score came in at 77. Her overseas Power score hit 74, showing strong performance across both markets.

Short-term signals moved even faster. YouTube mentions of Irene jumped 62.7 percent in a single day. Spotify-related metrics, including music search activity, rose 38.1 percent. The reaction skewed toward her core fandom rather than casual listeners, with the fandom response index up 27.4 percent in 24 hours.

The trigger was a beauty brand photocall on Sept. 3. Irene attended the "YSL Beauty Seongsu Boutique" event in the Seongsu district, and press photos, videos, and news coverage spread online within hours. Photo walls tend to generate multiple stories under different headlines, each one focused on a star's look, outfit, or expression. That pattern pushed her domestic media mention score to 83 for the day.

The impact spread beyond South Korea. Her overseas media mention score reached 47, a solid number driven largely by fans. On Chinese platform Weibo and other global social networks, users reshared on-site videos and press images posted by Korean fashion magazines. Hundreds of reposts later, the activity was reflected in her international buzz metrics.

The spike landed on top of momentum Irene had already built. On Aug. 18, following Red Velvet's full-group promotions, she made a YouTube web variety appearance that pushed her to No. 2 domestically and No. 3 globally on K-POPIT BOARD, with a momentum score of 90.3. The episode, from the YouTube show "Nothing Much Prepared, But" (Charin-geon Jwippuldo Eopjiman), was re;eased on Aug. 14. In it, Irene played drinking games and dropped her usually reserved image and showed a more relaxed side of herself. The clip has since surpassed roughly 4.5 million views.