Kwon Bo-ah (Korean: gweonboa, born November 5, 1986), known professionally as BoA, is a South Korean singer, dancer, composer and actress active in South Korea and Japan. She is referred to as the Queen of Korean Pop. Born and raised in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, she was discovered by SM Entertainment talent agents when she accompanied her older brother to a talent search.

BoA's second Japanese studio album, Valenti (2003), became her best-selling album, with over 1,249,000 copies sold. In support of the album, BoA launched BoA 1st Live Tour Valenti, her first Japanese concert tour. Later that year, she released two Korean albums, Atlantis Princess and the mini-album Shine We Are!. The former was the fifth-best-selling South Korean record of the year with around 345,000 units sold; the latter sold around 58,000 units.  Her third Japanese studio album, Love & Honesty (2004) was a musical "change in direction": it contained a rock-dance song ("Rock with You") and "harder" R&B. Though the album failed to match Valenti in sales, it topped the Oricon chart for two weeks and became RIAJ-certified triple-platinum. In support of the album, BoA held a tour, Live Concert Tour 2004: Love & Honesty. In contrast with 1st Live Tour, which "emphasized exotic Asian design", the Love & Honesty tour had an "outer-space, sci-fi" theme; among the props were a three-story-high space ship and the robot Asimo. The tour, which started in Saitama and ended in Yokohama, spanned nine performances and attracted approximately 105,000 attendants. Her first compilation album, Best of Soul (2005), however, sold over a million copies, making BoA the first non-Japanese Asian singer to have two million-selling albums in Japan.  BoA reinvented her image on her fourth Korean album, My Name (2004); she left the "cute" and "youthful" style that had characterized previous years and presented herself as "sexy" and "sultry". The album was the beginning of a foray into the Chinese market and contained two songs sung in Mandarin Chinese. The sales of BoA's Korean albums began to decline: the album sold 191,000 units and became the eleventh-best-selling South Korean album of the year. In September 2004, BoA instigated controversy in Japan when she donated W50 million to a memorial project for Korean independence activist and nationalist An Jung-geun.  Her fifth Korean album, Girls on Top (2005), continued her image change. The album portrayed the singer as more "mature and self-confident" and was a "declaration of war on male chauvinism"; the "bohemian" look of the cover photograph represented "freedom and depth", while music videos and album photographs that portrayed BoA in traditional Korean dress brought the "idea of Korean womanhood" into her music. The album also continued BoA's foray into the Chinese market and, like the previous album, contained Mandarin Chinese songs. The album sold less than the previous album; it was the fourteenth-best-selling record of the year in South Korea with 113,000 units sold.

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