Reports over the weekend announced that SM Entertainment's popular boy band EXO is getting close to the one million mark with their first album XOXO.

According to the agency, as off October 11 the group had sold 441,332 copies of the original album released in June and another 469,641 units for the repackaged version that came out in August.

This puts EXO close to reaching one million copies sold, a distinction that would make them the first idol group to do so since g.o.d dropped their fourth album twelve years ago.

However, these numbers do raise an important issue as to how album sales are calculated.

As many Korean netizens have been quick to point out, technically SM Entertainment is adding the sales of two albums together in order to reach that number and in reality EXO is approaching the half-million mark.

This is not the first time the agency has twisted the release schedule and numbers to make their artists look good.

SM was scrutinized earlier this year for saying that another idol group in their ranks, SHINee, had one of the best selling albums of 2013. However, technically the sales numbers reflected the three separate album releases - Dream Girl: The Misconceptions of You, Why So Serious?: The Misconceptions of Me, and the repackaged album The Misconceptions of Us.

Dream Girl was released in February, Why So Serious? in April and The Misconceptions of Us in August.

SM billed them as parts 1 and 2 of SHINee's third studio album and a re-release - which together total nearly 500,000 copies sold - but should they be counted together as one album? To some, this hardly seems fair.

Now, with EXO, many are saying SM is doing the same thing. Can and should sales from the original album and the repackage be added together?

What do you think? Is EXO bound to become K-Pop's next million seller idols, or is this just a fancy numbers game? Share your ideas in the comments section below.