Blackpink’s Jennie, Japanese PM Takaichi and Chloe Kim among TIME’s 100 most influential list

Jennie of the K-pop group Blackpink is the only Korean included in TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year.

According to the annual list released by the US weekly magazine on April 15, the artist was included in the artists category.

Gracie Abrams, a singer-songwriter and the daughter of filmmaker J.J. Abrams, introduced Jennie in TIME, saying, “To put it simply, she is a star,” and adding, “There is magic at her core. Whether you see her through a screen, in a stadium filled with 100,000 people, at a party, or in a backstage hallway, she draws you in in the same way.”

Jennie, already a prominent figure in K-pop, made waves with her first solo album Ruby becoming the first K-pop female solo artist to place three songs simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 main singles chart. The album was also included in Rolling Stone magazine’s “the 100 best albums of 2025”.

Other artists included in the same category were Korean-American pop star Anderson .Paak and actress Dakota Johnson.

In the leaders category, the list included Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, along with US President Donald Trump, Pope Leo XIV, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The Iions category featured Korean-American snowboarder Chloe Kim, as well as figure skater Alysa Liu, who won the gold medal in the women’s singles event at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK