What 'chodong' means
Chodong (초동) is Korean shorthand for an album's first-week sales — the number of physical copies sold in the first seven days after release. In K-pop, this window is watched more closely than any other sales figure.
Why fandoms care so much
First-week sales are driven almost entirely by an artist's core fandom: the fans who pre-order, buy multiple versions, and buy early. That makes chodong a proxy for the size and commitment of a fandom, which is why record-breaking first weeks are celebrated and compared across groups and generations.
Where the numbers come from
Physical sales in Korea are tracked by retail-level tally services and by official charts that aggregate over longer periods. Because they count at different points in the supply chain and on different schedules, their numbers rarely match exactly. Serious coverage always names which tracker a figure comes from — a habit K-POP PULSE follows.
What chodong does not tell you
A huge first week does not automatically mean a hit song among general listeners, and a modest one does not mean a flop — digital streaming, radio and longevity measure different things. Chodong measures the fandom; the general public shows up in other numbers.