Ban was the foreign minister of South Korea from January 2004 to November 2006. In February 2006, he began to campaign for the office of Secretary-General. Ban was initially considered to be a long shot for the office. As foreign minister of South Korea, however, he was able to travel to all the countries on the United Nations Security Council, a maneuver that turned him into the campaign's front runner.

Blackpink is the highest-charting female Korean act on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 13 with "Ice Cream" (2020), and on the Billboard 200, peaking at number two with The Album (2020), which is also the first-ever album by a Korean girl group to sell more than one million copies.^[1] They were the first Korean girl group to enter and top Billboard's Emerging Artists chart and to top the Billboard World Digital Song Sales chart three times.^[2] Blackpink was also the first female Korean act to receive a certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) with their hit single "Ddu-Du Ddu-Du" (2018), whose music video is currently the most-viewed by a Korean group on YouTube.^[3] Their 2018 song "Kiss and Make Up", a collaboration with Dua Lipa, was the first by a Korean group to receive a certification from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI)^[4] and a platinum certification from the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA).^[5]

Growing up in Kobe before moving to Tokyo to attend Waseda University, he published his first novel Hear the Wind Sing (1979) after working as the owner of a small jazz bar for seven years.^[8] His notable works include the novels Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–95), Kafka on the Shore (2002), and 1Q84 (2009–10), with 1Q84 ranked as the best work of Japan's Heisei era (1989-2019) by the national newspaper Asahi Shimbun's survey of literary experts.^[9] His work spans genres including science fiction, fantasy, and crime fiction, and has become known for its use of magical realist elements.^[10][11] His official website lists Raymond Chandler, Kurt Vonnegut, and Richard Brautigan as key inspirations to his work, while Murakami himself has cited Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy, and Dag Solstad as his favourite currently active writers.^[12][13] Murakami has also published five short story collections, including his most recently published work, First Person Singular (2020), and non-fiction works including Underground (1997), inspired by personal interviews Murakami conducted with victims of the Tokyo subway sarin attack, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007), a series of personal essays about his experience as a marathon runner.^[14]