Talk:Sechs Kies discography

No Official Records for Album Sales (Prior to September 1998)
The physical sales of SECHSKIES albums remain unclear not only because of DSP's under-reporting but also because the official records do not exist for the first three albums. The Recording Industry Association of Korea (hereafter, RIAK)'s official website currently only shows album sales data from year 1999. 한국영상음반협회 (The Korea Video Record Association), which preceded RIAK, had only announced physical album sales records from September 1998. Therefore, currently there are no official records for the physical sales of School Byeolgok (학원별곡), Welcome To The Sechskies Land, and Road Fighter. For these three albums, we can only estimate the album sales from newspaper articles.

The physical album sales for the first album, School Byeolgok (학원별곡), was 60,000 according to newspaper articles. The second album, Welcome To The Sechskies Land, sold 700,000 copies. In 2012, the former manager of SechsKies stated that their debut album sold between 1.7 and 1.8 million copies, but this may be a combined figure for the first two albums. The third album, Road Fighter, has two separate records. The official record reported by 한국영상음반협회 (The Korea Video Record Association) is 226,569. In contrast, a news report reveals that SechsKies' third album sold more than 700,000 copies The official sales record for SechsKies' biggest hit, Special Album, is 305,307 which seems to be a result of under-reporting. The discrepancy between official and estimated album sales is also great for the fourth album, Com’Back. The official record is merely 350,128. However, according to news articles, Com’Back seems to have sold for more than 700,000 copies.

On August 2000, DSP was investigated by the police for allegations of tax evasion, embezzlement and unequal contracts. DSP was cleared of suspicion except tax evasion by under-reporting the physical sales of albums. The National Tax Service conducted a tax audit of the corporation, and collected an additional hundreds of millions of won from it.

Thus, the physical sales of SechsKies album are currently not accurate as there are no official data. Also, even the official records cannot be fully trusted because of DSP has under-reported the physical sales to avoid taxes. I suggest using these official sources (RIKA and Korea Video Album Association archive data) and news articles.

Please remove any unreliable sources that may be posted by IP users, such as posts in fan forums. Thanks! Yelkie (talk) 09:55, 31 December 2016 (UTC)