True Taste Korea

Suga

  • Did BTS Become Too Big for Their Own Good?

    For years, BTS had one obvious goal:

    Become successful.

    That sounds simple enough.

    Seven young men from a relatively small company wanted more people to hear their music.

    They wanted better stages.

    More recognition.

    Bigger audiences.

    And eventually, they got all of it.

    Then they got something much bigger than that.

    They became BTS.

    A name recognizable far beyond Korea.

    And that makes me wonder about something we don’t talk about nearly as often.

    Can success become so enormous that it creates a new kind of problem?

    Success Solves Problems — Then Creates New Ones

    When BTS were young, many of their problems were obvious.

    Would people listen to them?

    Would they survive in the industry?

    Could they compete with groups from larger entertainment companies?

    Could they sell enough albums?

    Could they win?

    Those are painful problems.

    But they are also simple problems.

    You know what you’re fighting for.

    You want to make it.

    Then BTS made it.

    And eventually the questions changed.

    How do you follow a No. 1 song?

    How do you satisfy millions of fans who want different things?

    How do you experiment when every new release becomes an international event?

    How do you make a mistake when millions of people are watching?

    How do you even know what you want anymore when so many people want something from you?

    Those are very different problems.

    The Higher BTS Climbed, the Less Ordinary Anything Became

    This may be one of the strangest costs of extreme fame.

    For most of us, doing something ordinary is meaningless.

    We go to a restaurant.

    Meet a friend.

    Take a trip.

    Say something stupid.

    Change our minds.

    Try something and fail.

    Nobody cares.

    For a superstar, ordinary behavior can become content.

    A photograph becomes speculation.

    A comment becomes a headline.

    A mistake can travel around the world before breakfast.

    Even years before their peak global fame, BTS members acknowledged this kind of pressure. In a 2019 interview, RM and SUGA both said it would be untrue to claim they felt no pressure from global fame, while Jung Kook described becoming more conscious that his words and actions could create controversy or disappoint people.

    That’s an extraordinary way to live.

    And it makes me question one of the easiest things people say about celebrities:

    “They’re rich and famous. Why should we feel sorry for them?”

    Money Doesn’t Make the Trade-Off Imaginary

    I understand that argument.

    BTS members achieved extraordinary success.

    They received opportunities most musicians can only dream about.

    They became wealthy.

    They traveled the world.

    They performed in stadiums.

    Success brought enormous rewards.

    That shouldn’t be ignored.

    But acknowledging the reward doesn’t require pretending there was no cost.

    Those two things can be true at the same time.

    BTS can be extraordinarily fortunate and extraordinarily pressured.

    We don’t have to choose only one.

    And in 2022, the members themselves gave us a rare glimpse of that tension.

    The 2022 FESTA Conversation Changed How I Saw Their Success

    When BTS sat together for their 2022 FESTA dinner, some of what they said was surprisingly candid.

    RM talked about struggling to understand what BTS had become.

    He said that through “ON” and “Dynamite,” he still felt he understood the group’s identity, but around “Butter” and “Permission to Dance,” he became less certain about what kind of group BTS was.

    More importantly, he talked about something success couldn’t give him:

    time to grow as a person.

    He described the idol system as requiring artists to constantly produce content and music, leaving too little time to think about who they were becoming.

    SUGA talked about another problem.

    Writing lyrics had become difficult.

    He felt drained and sometimes struggled to find something he genuinely wanted to say rather than forcing words out.

    Jin used an even more striking expression: after so many years of group activity, he sometimes felt as though he had “become a machine.”

    Those statements stayed with me.

    Because these weren’t seven unsuccessful musicians complaining that nobody would listen to them.

    They had already won.

    And yet winning had created another problem:

    What do you do when the machine of success moves faster than the human beings inside it?

    Maybe BTS Became Too Successful to Stop

    This is one of the paradoxes of enormous success.

    When you’re unsuccessful, stopping is easy.

    Nobody is waiting.

    When millions of people are waiting, stopping becomes much harder.

    There are fans.

    Employees.

    Business partners.

    Concert venues.

    Contracts.

    Schedules.

    Media.

    Investors.

    Entire commercial ecosystems can form around a successful artist.

    And the bigger the artist becomes, the more people are affected by every decision.

    That doesn’t mean BTS had no control over their careers.

    It means the scale surrounding them had become enormous.

    Sometimes success creates freedom.

    But sometimes success also creates responsibility.

    And responsibility can become another kind of cage.

    Fans Can Become Part of the Pressure Without Meaning To

    This is where the subject becomes uncomfortable for fans.

    Because love can create pressure too.

    One fan wants another hip-hop album.

    Another wants another “Dynamite.”

    Another wants BTS to write everything themselves.

    Another wants more solo music.

    Another wants OT7.

    Another wants world tours.

    Another wants them to rest.

    Another wants more livestreams.

    Another wants privacy for the members—but also wants to know everything they’re doing.

    Most of those fans aren’t trying to hurt BTS.

    Quite the opposite.

    They want more because they love them.

    But imagine millions of people loving you in millions of slightly different ways.

    At some point, even affection must become heavy.

    The Company Has Expectations Too

    Then there is the business surrounding BTS.

    BTS did not remain seven young men working inside a small entertainment company.

    Their success helped transform the scale of the business around them.

    That inevitably means commercial expectations exist alongside artistic ones.

    This doesn’t require a conspiracy theory.

    It’s simply how entertainment businesses work.

    Successful music generates demand.

    Demand creates investment.

    Investment creates expectations for future returns.

    The bigger the machine becomes, the more difficult it may become to make decisions as if the machine doesn’t exist.

    And that connects to the question I asked in my previous article about BTS’s changing music.

    Seven members have their own artistic desires.

    Fans have expectations.

    The company has commercial considerations.

    International collaborators bring other influences.

    The global market adds another layer.

    At some point, making “a BTS song” becomes much more complicated than seven friends entering a studio and asking:

    “What do we want to make?”

    Maybe the Solo Era Wasn’t a Break From BTS

    This also changes the way I interpret their solo period.

    At first glance, seven members pursuing individual projects can look like a group moving apart.

    But listen to what the members actually said in 2022.

    J-Hope’s view, as recalled during the FESTA discussion, was that spending time on individual activities could allow them to reunite later with stronger synergy. RM said he needed time for his own work and reflection. Jimin spoke about the members beginning to think seriously about what kind of artists they individually wanted to become.

    Perhaps the solo era wasn’t primarily about escaping BTS.

    Maybe it was about rediscovering the people inside BTS.

    That’s a very different interpretation.

    Fame Can Even Change the Meaning of Freedom

    There is another irony here.

    Young artists often dream of success because success represents freedom.

    If I’m successful, I can make the music I want.

    If I’m successful, nobody can ignore me.

    If I’m successful, I’ll finally have choices.

    But extreme fame may produce the opposite problem.

    Suddenly every choice matters too much.

    A small experimental release isn’t small anymore.

    A casual statement isn’t casual.

    A friendship may become gossip.

    A private relationship can become public debate.

    A musical failure isn’t simply a bad song—it becomes an international discussion about whether BTS is declining.

    That’s an extraordinary amount of meaning to attach to ordinary human choices.

    Perhaps extreme fame doesn’t eliminate freedom.

    But it certainly changes its price.

    Reddit Fans Still Debate This

    The tension hasn’t disappeared.

    Recent Reddit discussions still ask how BTS has managed life at such an extreme level of fame. Some fans emphasize the members’ apparent groundedness, relationships with one another and ability to protect parts of their private lives; others point to the pressures the members themselves have discussed publicly.

    Older fans also describe something interesting when looking back across BTS’s career.

    Some say the members seem fundamentally recognizable despite becoming vastly richer, more famous and more experienced; what changed most obviously was their maturity and professionalism.

    I find that perspective important.

    Extreme fame doesn’t automatically destroy a person.

    Nor should we romanticize suffering and assume every famous person must secretly be miserable.

    We simply don’t know their private lives.

    What we do know is that BTS themselves have publicly acknowledged that the scale and pace of their careers created real pressure.

    That’s enough to make the question worth asking.

    Maybe the Greatest Luxury Is Becoming Ordinary Again

    When people imagine celebrity luxury, they think about expensive homes.

    Cars.

    Private flights.

    Designer clothes.

    Exclusive restaurants.

    But after reaching a certain level of fame, I sometimes wonder whether the rarest luxury becomes something completely different.

    Being ignored.

    Walking somewhere without being photographed.

    Meeting someone without people asking who they are.

    Making bad music without millions of people analyzing what it means for your career.

    Changing your mind without somebody saving the old statement forever.

    Falling in love without turning another human being into international news.

    Failing privately.

    For most of us, these things are free.

    For people at BTS’s level of fame, they may be among the most difficult things to obtain.

    So Did BTS Become Too Big for Their Own Good?

    Maybe that’s still the wrong question.

    Because becoming successful wasn’t a mistake.

    Their achievements opened doors for themselves and helped expand what Korean artists could imagine internationally.

    Millions of people found music that mattered to them.

    The members gained opportunities that would never have existed otherwise.

    There is no reason to pretend that success was some tragedy.

    But there is also no reason to pretend that every additional level of fame automatically makes life better.

    At some point, more success stops solving the old problems and starts creating new ones.

    Perhaps BTS reached that point.

    And maybe the real achievement of their next chapter won’t be becoming even bigger.

    They have already demonstrated how big BTS can become.

    The more interesting challenge may be something much simpler:

    Can seven people who became one of the biggest groups in the world build lives in which they can still be seven people?

    Because success can give you almost everything.

    Except, sometimes,

    the ordinary life you had before anyone knew your name.

  • Did BTS Going Solo Make the Group Stronger — Or Divide ARMY?

    For years, one number seemed inseparable from BTS.

    Seven.

    Seven members.

    Seven different personalities.

    Seven different voices.

    But one group.

    That was part of the attraction.

    Then something interesting happened.

    The members began showing us much more clearly who they were without the other six standing beside them.

    RM sounded like RM.

    SUGA sounded like SUGA.

    j-hope sounded like j-hope.

    Jin, Jimin, V and Jung Kook each began building musical worlds that could not simply be described as “BTS songs without BTS.”

    And I started thinking about a strange question.

    Did BTS need to separate for a while in order to become stronger together?

    Because something else happened at the same time.

    The fans began separating too.

    Seven Members Were Never Seven Copies of the Same Artist

    This connects directly to something I wrote about BTS’s changing sound.

    We sometimes talk about “the BTS sound” as if seven people naturally want to make exactly the same music.

    But why would they?

    They aren’t seven copies of one musician.

    Even before the solo era, their different musical instincts were visible.

    BTS’s official history notes that by The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt.1, participation in songwriting and production had expanded beyond RM, SUGA and j-hope to the vocal members as well.

    As the years passed, those individual tastes became increasingly obvious.

    And eventually there was enough room for each member to say:

    This is what I sound like.

    That may have been necessary.

    A Group Can Also Become a Limitation

    Being in a successful group must be an extraordinary opportunity.

    But I imagine it can also create artistic compromises.

    There are seven voices to consider.

    Seven personalities.

    Seven sets of strengths.

    A BTS song has to work as a BTS song.

    That doesn’t mean every member can fully explore every musical idea he personally wants to explore within it.

    This is why I find the solo era so interesting.

    For the first time, we could hear those differences without requiring them to fit inside one song.

    And the differences were much larger than I expected.

    That tells me something.

    Maybe BTS never had one musical color in the first place.

    Maybe what we called “BTS’s color” was the color created when seven very different colors were mixed together.

    Perhaps Solo Music Actually Explains BTS

    This changed the way I thought about the group.

    Sometimes you understand a mixture better after separating its ingredients.

    Listen to the members individually, and certain parts of BTS begin making more sense.

    You begin to recognize where particular emotions, rhythms, vocal colors or musical instincts may come from.

    Then when those seven people stand together again, you don’t necessarily hear them as one object.

    You hear seven individuals creating an eighth thing:

    BTS.

    That may ultimately make the group more interesting, not less.

    But there is a problem.

    The Members Became More Individual — And So Did the Fans

    This is where things become complicated.

    Once seven members release very different music, fans will naturally prefer some of it over others.

    Someone might love one member’s solo album and rarely listen to another’s.

    Someone may discover BTS because of Jung Kook.

    Someone else because of Jimin.

    Someone else through RM or SUGA.

    And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

    Even an OT7 fan doesn’t have to like every song equally.

    But individual preference can become individual competition.

    And that is where the solo era created tension.

    Reddit Fans Have Noticed the Change

    This isn’t just my imagination.

    In a 2025 Reddit discussion, fans debated whether the fandom had become more divided since individual projects expanded.

    Some described increased solo stanning, comparisons between members and separate fan bubbles.

    Others argued that ARMY had simply become too enormous to appear completely unified, and that the absence of regular full-group activity during military service made those divisions more visible.

    What’s especially interesting is that concerns about solo stans existed before the full solo era.

    Back in 2021, moderators of the main BTS subreddit addressed what they described as an increase in antagonistic solo-stan behavior, while carefully distinguishing between simply having a favorite member and attacking or diminishing the others.

    So the solo era didn’t invent this problem.

    Perhaps it simply gave it more room to grow.

    Having a Favorite Member Isn’t the Problem

    This distinction matters.

    Having a bias is normal.

    Preferring one member’s voice is normal.

    Loving one solo album more than another is normal.

    Even becoming interested in BTS because of only one member is normal.

    The problem begins when:

    “I love this member”

    turns into:

    “Therefore the other members are his competition.”

    That’s a completely different relationship with the group.

    And once fans begin comparing sales, streams, promotions, chart positions and opportunities between members, seven people who spent years creating together can begin to look like seven rival companies.

    Whether the members themselves see their relationship that way is a separate question.

    Fans can create competitions that the artists never asked for.

    But Solo Fans Can Also Walk in the Opposite Direction

    Here’s why the story isn’t simple.

    Solo activity can divide a fandom.

    But it can also expand it.

    A recent Reddit post offered almost the reverse story: a listener first became interested specifically in Jung Kook, consumed his solo work, and then gradually moved toward BTS as a whole.

    That’s important.

    The doorway doesn’t always work like this:

    BTS → favorite member.

    It can also work:

    favorite member → BTS.

    Seven solo careers therefore create seven different entrances into the same house.

    Someone who would never have discovered BTS through an older group track might hear one member’s solo song and become curious:

    Who are the other six?

    And There Is One Small Detail I Find Fascinating

    Even during their individual activities, BTS members continued using the name ARMY for their fans.

    Fans themselves noticed this.

    A 2023 r/bangtan discussion focused specifically on how unusual and meaningful some fans found it that members pursuing individual careers continued addressing supporters with the group’s fandom name rather than creating entirely separate fandom identities.

    I don’t want to read the members’ private intentions into that.

    Only they can explain exactly what it means to them.

    But symbolically, I find it interesting.

    Seven individual artists emerged.

    Yet the old name remained.

    ARMY.

    Maybe BTS Needed the Solo Era More Than ARMY Did

    From an artistic perspective, I increasingly think this period made sense.

    Imagine reaching your late twenties or thirties after spending almost your entire adult life inside one enormously successful group.

    Wouldn’t you eventually wonder:

    What does my music sound like when I make something primarily as myself?

    That isn’t necessarily rejection of the group.

    It may simply be part of becoming an adult artist.

    And perhaps allowing each member that space makes staying together more sustainable.

    A group held together because its members have nowhere else to go is one thing.

    A group made of people who can stand alone but still choose to return is something different.

    That idea interests me much more.

    Seven Stronger Individuals Could Create a Different BTS

    This brings us back to the question from my previous article.

    I don’t necessarily want BTS to recreate the BTS of ten years ago.

    The members aren’t those people anymore.

    Their solo work has probably made that even more obvious.

    They’ve had opportunities to discover what works for them individually.

    So when they create music together again, why should they pretend none of that happened?

    I’d rather hear those experiences enter BTS.

    Not erase them.

    Because perhaps the next version of BTS won’t come from seven people suppressing their individual colors.

    Perhaps it will come from seven people bringing those colors back to the same table.

    And seeing what happens when they mix again.

    But ARMY Faces the Same Test

    There is a strange irony here.

    The solo era may have taught BTS members how to become stronger individuals.

    But it may also have taught some fans to think more individually.

    My member.

    My album.

    My streaming numbers.

    My chart position.

    My favorite versus yours.

    So perhaps the biggest question isn’t whether BTS can come back together.

    Maybe it’s whether the fandom can accept that supporting seven people does not require pretending all seven are identical.

    You can prefer one member’s music.

    Someone else can prefer another.

    That difference doesn’t automatically have to become a war.

    Seven different artists can still be BTS.

    And seven different preferences can still exist inside ARMY.

    Maybe “OT7” Has to Mean Something Different Now

    When BTS were younger, OT7 could feel simple.

    Seven members standing on one stage.

    One album.

    One tour.

    One group.

    But after the solo era, perhaps OT7 has to become more mature.

    It cannot mean:

    “I must like everything equally.”

    That’s unrealistic.

    Maybe it means:

    “I can appreciate each member as an individual without needing his success to come at the expense of another member.”

    That is a harder version of OT7.

    But perhaps it’s also a healthier one.

    So Did Solo Careers Divide BTS?

    I don’t think that’s the most interesting question.

    The members were always individuals.

    Solo work simply allowed us to see those differences more clearly.

    And yes, those differences may have contributed to divisions within parts of the fandom.

    But they also created new music, new audiences and new ways to discover BTS.

    So I keep returning to another thought:

    Maybe becoming seven individual artists was not the opposite of being BTS.

    Maybe it was the next stage of becoming BTS.

    Because after more than a decade together, unity shouldn’t require seven people to remain the same.

    Real unity might mean something much harder:

    Growing differently.

    Standing independently.

    And then still finding a reason to stand together.

    Perhaps that’s the real test of BTS’s next chapter.

    Not whether they can become the seven young men they once were.

    But whether seven grown artists—with seven careers, seven musical identities and seven different lives—

    can create something that still sounds like BTS.

  • BTS Just Broke U.S. Stadium Records — How Big Is the ARIRANG Tour Really?

    BTS is back — and the numbers suggest their global power may be bigger than ever.

    The North American leg of the BTS WORLD TOUR ‘ARIRANG’ has officially ended, and the scale is staggering:

    1.92 million fans.
    12 cities.
    31 concerts.
    31 sold-out shows.

    The tour concluded with four massive concerts at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on September 1, 2, 5 and 6, 2026.

    Those four Los Angeles shows alone attracted approximately 282,000 fans.

    But there is an even bigger story behind those numbers.

    BTS didn’t simply return after years of individual activities and military service.

    They returned to a North American stadium market that had changed dramatically during their absence — and immediately proved that the demand for the seven-member group had not disappeared.

    1.92 Million Fans Across North America

    According to BigHit Music, BTS performed 31 sold-out concerts across 12 North American cities, drawing approximately 1.92 million concertgoers during the ARIRANG tour’s North American leg.

    Think about that number for a moment.

    1.92 million people is not simply a successful K-pop tour.

    It puts the scale of BTS’s live audience into the territory occupied by the world’s biggest touring artists.

    And every one of those 31 shows was sold out.

    That matters because the biggest question surrounding BTS’s full-group return was never whether their fans still existed.

    The real question was:

    Would BTS still command the same enormous live demand after years away from full-group touring?

    The answer from North America appears emphatic.

    BTS Just Made More History at SoFi Stadium

    The final four concerts in Los Angeles were especially significant.

    Approximately 282,000 people attended the four SoFi Stadium shows.

    BTS had already performed four concerts at SoFi Stadium in 2021 during BTS PERMISSION TO DANCE ON STAGE – LA.

    Add the four 2026 ARIRANG concerts, and BTS has now performed at SoFi Stadium eight times.

    That is more concerts at the venue than any other act, according to BigHit Music.

    Their cumulative attendance from those eight shows has reached approximately 496,000 people, also setting a stadium record for cumulative attendance by a group since SoFi opened.

    This is particularly remarkable because SoFi Stadium is not a small concert venue.

    It is one of America’s premier NFL stadiums and the home of the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers.

    Selling it out once is an achievement.

    BTS has now filled it again and again.

    Four Los Angeles Shows — 282,000 Fans

    The Los Angeles finale demonstrates the sheer scale of modern BTS concerts.

    Across four nights:

    about 282,000 people attended in person.

    And the audience went far beyond the people inside the stadium.

    The concerts were livestreamed through Weverse and viewed by fans in 177 countries and regions.

    That combination is important.

    BTS is no longer operating purely as a touring artist that moves from city to city.

    A single stadium concert can simultaneously become a global digital event.

    Los Angeles Even Declared “BTS Week”

    The impact also spread beyond SoFi Stadium.

    The City of Los Angeles proclaimed September 1–8 as “BTS Week,” while Los Angeles City Hall was illuminated in red to mark the group’s arrival.

    Other North American cities and regions also created special events or official proclamations around the tour.

    Toronto designated the group’s concert weekend as “BTS Weekend,” while part of Yonge Street was temporarily renamed “BTS Boulevard.”

    Illinois proclaimed August 27–28 “BTS Day in Illinois.”

    That shows something concert attendance alone cannot measure.

    BTS tours increasingly function as major city events, bringing together concerts, tourism, local businesses and fan communities.

    Why the ARIRANG Tour Matters

    There is another reason these numbers matter.

    BTS spent years without normal full-group activities while the members completed their military service and pursued solo projects.

    During that time, K-pop continued expanding.

    New groups emerged.

    Streaming habits changed.

    TikTok became even more influential.

    The global pop market moved on.

    In theory, BTS could have returned to a completely different competitive environment.

    Instead, their first major full-group world tour has produced enormous stadium crowds.

    That suggests something important:

    BTS may no longer depend on the normal life cycle of a pop group.

    They have built a global fan ecosystem large enough to survive a lengthy group hiatus.

    Is BTS Bigger After the Hiatus?

    That may be the most interesting question.

    Normally, disappearing from group activities for several years is dangerous in pop music.

    Fans move on.

    Trends change.

    New stars appear.

    But BTS had something unusual during their hiatus.

    The seven members remained visible through individual music, performances and other activities, while the idea of a full BTS reunion became increasingly valuable precisely because it was unavailable.

    When all seven finally returned, the comeback was not simply another album cycle.

    It became an event.

    The ARIRANG tour numbers show the result.

    31 shows.
    31 sellouts.
    1.92 million North American fans.

    Rather than starting over, BTS appears to have returned to an audience that had been waiting.

    ARIRANG Is Bigger Than Just a Concert Name

    There is also cultural symbolism behind the tour.

    “Arirang” is one of Korea’s best-known traditional folk songs and one of the country’s most recognizable cultural symbols.

    During the Los Angeles concerts, BTS performed “Body to Body,” a track from the group’s fifth studio album ARIRANG, which incorporates the melody of the traditional song.

    Fans inside SoFi Stadium raised Korean flags as the melody played.

    It was a striking image:

    One of America’s largest stadiums filled with fans from different backgrounds, listening to a Korean pop group incorporate one of Korea’s oldest and most recognizable melodies into a modern stadium performance.

    For anyone trying to understand how far Korean popular culture has traveled, that moment may say as much as the ticket numbers.

    And the World Tour Isn’t Finished

    The North American leg is over.

    The ARIRANG tour is not.

    BTS is scheduled to begin the South American leg on October 2 in Bogotá, Colombia, before continuing through Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires and São Paulo.

    For Colombia, Peru and Argentina, the shows will mark BTS’s first visits as a complete seven-member group.

    That means the final scale of the ARIRANG world tour will be considerably larger than the 1.92 million fans counted in North America.

    Final Thoughts

    For years, one question followed BTS through their military-service hiatus:

    Would they still be as big when all seven members returned?

    North America has now given us the first serious answer.

    BTS didn’t return to arenas.

    They returned to stadiums.

    They didn’t sell out a handful of concerts.

    They sold out 31 consecutive North American shows.

    And they didn’t simply revisit SoFi Stadium.

    They extended their record there to eight concerts and roughly 496,000 cumulative attendees.

    The most interesting question may therefore no longer be whether BTS survived their hiatus.

    It may be this:

    How much bigger can BTS become now that all seven members are back?