Despite CORTIS’s second mini album ‘GREENGREEN’ smashing past 1.22 million pre-orders, the reaction online has turned icy, sparking fresh controversy.
According to distributors YG PLUS and Universal Records, as of the 2nd, pre-orders for CORTIS’s new release totaled 1,227,986.
That figure came just one week after pre-sales opened on March 27, roughly triple the Hanteo Chart first-week sales (436,367) of their debut album ‘COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES.’
While CORTIS already achieved a million-seller milestone on pre-orders alone, listeners are raising questions. Netizens commented, “Is it really possible to sell over a million during a hiatus?”, “They barely even held fan-sign events, so how did this happen?”, “That company has a history,” and “Popularity you can’t feel in real life.” Others countered, “They must have gained a huge overseas fandom,” and “It’s possible because they’re blowing up on TikTok.”
Meanwhile, allegations of HYBE’s “album pushing” were confirmed as fact in a judgment released on the 12th of last month regarding the put option dispute between former ADOR CEO Min Hee-jin and HYBE. The document states that in 2023, two albums from labels under HYBE were distributed using a sale-with-right-of-return method—70,000 copies each, totaling 140,000—and that these quantities were counted toward initial first-week sales.