The Oricon rankings for the first half of 2011 has been revealed, and male group TVXQ placed the highest on the rankings amongst foreign artists.

On the Oricon singles chart for the first half of 2011, AKB48 took the top two spots (1st and 2nd), followed by Arashi at 3rd. In 4th place was none other than TVXQ, whose album “Why?” (Keep Your Head Down) released back in January sold an astounding figure of 230,000 units in its first week. The album ranked first not only on the Oricon daily singles chart, but also the Oricon weekly chart. This marked the 9th time in which they ranked 1st, which is also a record for the most amount of number 1 hits by a foreign artist.

Other notable Korean artists who placed on the singles chart include KARA and Jang Geun Suk, who ranked 12th and 15th respectively. In addition, female group SNSD ranked 10th on the full album chart, while KARA ranked 14th with almost 230,000 copies sold.

TVXQ will be releasing their next Japanese single, “Superstar” on July 20th, which is expected to chart 1st on the weekly charts.

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