A break or an end? saying to themselves “exhausted”, the K-pop group BTS announced this Tuesday a break so that each of the seven young men composing it focuses on their own journey, after the global career of this boy band which generates billions of dollars for the South-Eastern economy. Korean. This group is so influential with part of the globalized youth that it has just been received at the White House by President Joe Biden to denounce anti-Asian racism in the United States.
The announcement of this break, which had the effect of a bomb, was made during a dinner broadcast online to mark the ninth anniversary of the group. Made up of seven artists in their twenties, it achieved an annual turnover of more than one billion dollars in 2021, thanks to online content and album sales. BTS is also seen as a pump to generate billions of dollars in spinoffs for their country, South Korea.
One of the seven of BTS, “RM”, 27 years old, explained that after several nominations for the Grammy Awards, the awards of the American music industry, they “did not know which group they formed” exactly, adding that some members were “exhausted”.
«Star system»
“I always thought BTS was different from other bands. […] but the problem with K-pop and the whole star system is that you don’t have time to mature.”, continued the young man to millions of fans and the global music industry. “RM” pointed out that as a group, BTS “had to constantly produce music and do something”.
“In ten years, I have changed and I need to think and have time for myself”, concluded the artist. One of his partners, Jimin (Park Ji-min), 26, did not say anything else, saying during this dinner that he and his six young co-artists “trying little by little to understand” what happened to them and “to think about the memory that everyone wanted to leave to their fans”.
Jimin, who spoke in Korean and whose comments were captioned in English on a video, added that BTS “was going through a difficult pass, (that he) was looking for (his) identity, a long and exhausting process”. At the end of the dinner, some of the seven young men – authors of the hits “Dynamite” and “Butter” – let out a few tears and expressed their gratitude to their fans, grouped under the banner of “army”.
“Need for change”
BTS, which has just released an anthology album (“Proof”), had already announced «pauses» in 2019 and 2021. But this time, the group “needs change” and desire “starting a new chapter”, hammered J-Hope, another member of the septet. South Korean artists, in dark tie suits and white shirts, were invited by President Biden to the White House on May 31 to denounce racism against Asians in the United States.
The American presidency had said that it saw in BTS “youth ambassadors who spread a message of hope and optimism” in the world. The group had already been invited twice to address the United Nations, in 2018 and 2021, in particular about climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic.