The story of BTS

A small label and a teenage rapper

The story of BTS starts with a producer called Bang Si-hyuk. Born in Seoul in 1972, he studied aesthetics at Seoul National University, much to the disappointment of parents who had hoped he would pick law. In the late nineties he worked closely with Park Jin-young at JYP Entertainment, writing and arranging for acts like the boy band g.o.d, and his run of hits earned him the nickname Hitman. On the first of February 2005 he set up his own company, Big Hit Entertainment. It struggled badly. By 2007 it had four employees and was close to bankruptcy, and it only stayed afloat after a hit by the vocal trio 8Eight two years later.[1] [2] [3]

In 2010 Bang found the young man he would build a group around. Kim Nam-joon, born in 1994 and raised in Ilsan, was a top student who wrote poetry and fell for hip hop at eleven after hearing the Korean group Epik High. As a teenager he rapped in the underground scene as Runch Randa. In 2009 he failed an audition at another label after forgetting his lyrics, but the rapper Sleepy passed his name to Big Hit producer Pdogg. Bang offered the sixteen year old a place and he said yes on the spot, without telling his parents. They wanted him to study, so he asked his mother whether she would rather have a son who was the best rapper or the five thousandth best student.[1] [2]

Bang's first idea was a pure hip hop crew. Min Yoon-gi, a rapper and beatmaker from Daegu who had worked part time in a recording studio at seventeen, joined as a producer trainee. Jung Ho-seok, a street dancer from Gwangju who had won a national dance contest in 2008, came in next. But record sales were falling and digital income was not yet filling the gap, so Bang decided an idol group, with concerts and devoted fans, made better business sense. Many of the rapper trainees refused or were let go. Kim, Min and Jung stayed, and would become RM, Suga and J-Hope. Suga later said he hurt his shoulder in those lean trainee years while working delivery jobs, an injury that troubled him for years.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The singers arrived one by one. Kim Seok-jin, a film student who wanted to act, was stopped in the street by a Big Hit scout because of his looks and became Jin. Jeon Jung-kook from Busan failed the Superstar K television auditions in 2011, yet had offers from seven companies, and picked Big Hit because he thought RM looked really cool when he rapped. Kim Tae-hyung from Daegu, a saxophone playing teenager, went along to an audition to support a friend and ended up signed himself. As V he was kept hidden from fans as a secret member until debut. Last of all came Park Ji-min, a top contemporary dance student from Busan, who trained for only six months.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The seven lived together in a shared dorm, practising up to fifteen hours a day, while Big Hit posted their vlogs and mixtapes on a blog long before anyone knew them. The name was Bangtan Sonyeondan, the Bulletproof Boy Scouts, meant as a shield for young people against stereotypes and pressure. On the twelfth of June 2013 they released the single album 2 Cool 4 Skool, led by No More Dream, a song about teenagers crushed by their parents' expectations. RM and Suga rewrote its lyrics more than twenty times. They made their stage debut on M Countdown the next day. Big Hit was a minnow next to the three giant agencies, and the single stalled at number one hundred and twenty four in Korea.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The school trilogy and the hard years

BTS kept hammering at the same theme. In September 2013 the EP O!RUL8,2? and its single N.O attacked South Korea's exam obsessed school system, and the group won several rookie awards by the end of the year. That December Suga had his appendix removed and then went back into hospital with an infected wound, missing the year end shows. In February 2014 the EP Skool Luv Affair, led by Boy in Luv, topped the Korean album chart and put them on Billboard's World Albums chart for the first time, at number three. A month later three thousand fans came to their first fan meeting, where the fan club was named A.R.M.Y., short for Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 2014 the group filmed an American reality show, American Hustle Life, in which veteran rappers schooled them in hip hop. One of them was Warren G, who stayed in touch with RM and later recorded a song with him. That July BTS played their first American show in West Hollywood, and in August they appeared at KCON in Los Angeles. Their first full album, Dark and Wild, came out the same month and reached number two in Korea. One of its songs, War of Hormone, was later criticised as misogynist, and their agency later apologised, saying the members regretted anything that could be read as objectifying women.[1] [2] [3]

Their first tour, The Red Bullet, began in Seoul in October 2014 and eventually reached Asia, Australia and the Americas, playing to about eighty thousand people in eighteen cities. A Japanese album, Wake Up, reached number three in Japan that December. Big Hit was still a small company, and its other young act was falling apart. Glam, the girl group it had launched with Source Music in 2012, was engulfed when member Dahee was jailed over an attempt to blackmail the actor Lee Byung-hun, and the group disbanded in January 2015. In March 2015 RM released his first mixtape, working on it between tour dates, and later called much of it angry and immature.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The most beautiful moment in life

In April 2015 BTS changed gear. The EP The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Part One took its title from a Korean phrase for the flower of youth, and its single I Need U softened their sound into emotional pop. It gave them their first ever win on a Korean music show. The video had to be trimmed to lower its age rating, and an uncut version came out later. It also launched what fans call the BTS Universe, a story of troubled friends that ran through music videos, short films, books and games for years, full of hidden clues. The next single, Dope, whose Korean title roughly means it's awesome, passed one hundred million YouTube views.[1] [2] [3]

Part Two followed in November 2015 and gave BTS their first appearance on the Billboard 200, for a single week at number one hundred and seventy one. The songs dealt with young Koreans who felt they had been handed a rigged game, giving up on jobs, homes and romance while older people called them lazy. In May 2016 the compilation Young Forever closed the youth trilogy and won Album of the Year at the Melon Music Awards. Tickets for their Asian arena dates that summer sold out, some in as little as five seconds. In November 2016, at a fan meeting, V coined the phrase I purple you, and purple became the colour of BTS and their fans.[1] [2] [3]

In October 2016 came Wings, an album built around Hermann Hesse's novel Demian and its theme of temptation. The single Blood Sweat and Tears borrowed an idea from Nietzsche, and its video was full of Renaissance art, including paintings of Icarus falling. Each member had a solo song, the first time the singers stood alone. Wings opened at number twenty six in America, then the best week ever there for a K-pop album, and became the best selling album in the history of the Korean Gaon chart. It landed during the political scandal that brought down President Park Geun-hye, and the song Am I Wrong seemed to jab at an education official who had reportedly compared ordinary people to dogs and pigs.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In February 2017 BTS released Spring Day. RM came up with its melody on a walk through a park in Yeouido, and its video drew on Ursula K. Le Guin's story about a city called Omelas, a book Bang had been reading. It won Song of the Year at the Melon Music Awards. That same year the members and Big Hit quietly gave one hundred million won to an organisation for families of the victims of the Sewol ferry disaster, which in 2014 left more than three hundred people dead or missing, most of them high school students. In May 2017 BTS won Top Social Artist at the Billboard Music Awards, ending Justin Bieber's six year run, after fans cast more than three hundred million votes.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Love Yourself and the American breakthrough

In September 2017 BTS began a new series, Love Yourself. The EP Her was the first by a K-pop group to pass a million pre-orders, and its single DNA became their first entry on the Billboard Hot 100. Fans had organised a campaign to phone American radio stations one by one, writing scripts so callers would stay polite when DJs said nobody wanted Korean music. A remix of Mic Drop with Steve Aoki and the rapper Desiigner reached number twenty eight, the first time a K-pop group cracked the top forty. RM said the song was inspired by Barack Obama dropping his microphone at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. That November Rap Monster officially shortened his name to RM.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In May 2018 Love Yourself: Tear became the first K-pop album to reach number one on the Billboard 200, and Fake Love went top ten, a first for a song sung mostly in a language other than English. The compilation Answer followed in August and also went to number one. Their world tour started with two sold out nights at Seoul's Olympic Stadium, and on the sixth of October 2018 they played Citi Field in New York, the first Korean act to headline an American stadium. Jimin broke down in tears at the end. That October they renewed their contract with Big Hit for another seven years, and two years later the members were given shares in the company.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the twenty fourth of September 2018 BTS spoke at the United Nations in New York for the launch of a UNICEF youth programme. RM gave a six minute speech in English about learning to accept yourself, tied to the Love Myself anti violence campaign the band had started with UNICEF in 2017. A month later President Moon Jae-in gave all seven the Order of Cultural Merit, making them the youngest recipients ever. Then came trouble. In November a Japanese music show cancelled their appearance over a 2017 photo of Jimin in a T-shirt celebrating Korea's liberation with a picture of an atomic bomb cloud, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center attacked a hat RM had worn with an SS symbol. Big Hit apologised, and the apology was accepted.[1] [2] [3] [4]

By 2019 BTS were presenting at the Grammys and being named in Time's list of the hundred most influential people. In April they released Map of the Soul: Persona, led by Boy with Luv featuring Halsey, whose video drew almost seventy five million views in its first day, a YouTube record at the time. The day after release they became the first K-pop act on Saturday Night Live. The stadium tour that followed took them to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Soldier Field in Chicago and London's Wembley Stadium, where they were the first Korean act to headline. In October 2019 they played King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh, the first foreign act to stage a solo concert in Saudi Arabia.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Dynamite and a year indoors

In January 2020 BTS became the first Korean act to perform at the Grammys. Their album Map of the Soul: 7, released on the twenty first of February 2020, drew more than four million pre-orders and sold over four million copies in nine days, the best selling album in South Korean history at the time. It went straight to number one in America, making BTS the fastest group to four number one albums since the Beatles. Then the pandemic hit and their stadium tour was postponed. Stuck in Seoul, they streamed old concerts online and in June held a paid live stream, Bang Bang Con: The Live, which peaked at more than seven hundred and fifty thousand viewers in over a hundred countries.[1] [2]

With the tour gone, Big Hit went looking for an English language single. The winning song came from the British writer and producer David Stewart and his partner Jessica Agombar, who had pitched it over Zoom early in lockdown. Stewart made it on his laptop in his bedroom at his parents' house. Bang later said Dynamite would never have come out if BTS had been on the road. Released on the twenty first of August 2020, its YouTube premiere drew more than three million people watching at once, and it passed a hundred million views within a day. It went straight to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, the first chart topper by an all South Korean act, and President Moon sent his congratulations.[1] [2] [3] [4]

That summer BTS gave one million dollars to Black Lives Matter, and fans raised the same amount in about twenty five hours. In October 2020 the band received the Van Fleet Award, which honours work for relations between the United States and Korea. RM spoke of the pain the two nations shared during the Korean War, and Chinese social media erupted, with the state run Global Times accusing BTS of ignoring China's side. The storm faded within a week and some of the articles were quietly taken down. On the fifteenth of October Big Hit floated on the Seoul stock exchange, its shares opening at double the offer price and making Bang a billionaire.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In October 2020 a BTS remix of Jawsh 685 and Jason Derulo's Savage Love also reached number one. The album Be, made during lockdown, arrived on the twentieth of November, and its single Life Goes On, directed on video by Jungkook, became the first song sung mainly in Korean to top the Hot 100, even though American radio barely played it. Days later Dynamite earned BTS their first Grammy nomination, the first ever for a Korean pop act. In December parliament passed what was nicknamed the BTS law, letting honoured pop stars delay military service until thirty, days before Jin turned twenty eight. Suga, meanwhile, finally had surgery on the shoulder he had hurt as a trainee.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Butter, envoys and the pause

In March 2021 BTS performed Dynamite at the Grammys but lost the award. The IFPI named them the world's biggest selling recording artist of 2020, the first Asian act to top that list. On the twenty first of May came Butter, another English language single built for summer. RM said they picked it from a pile of submissions and he rewrote about half of the rap. It went straight to number one. A remix with Megan Thee Stallion ran into trouble when her own label tried to block it, and she went to a Texas court to get it released. In July they released Permission to Dance, co-written by Ed Sheeran, and it replaced Butter at the top of the Hot 100.[1] [2] [3]

In July 2021 President Moon made BTS special presidential envoys for future generations and culture, and that September they addressed the United Nations General Assembly again. Also in September came My Universe, a song Chris Martin had written for them with Coldplay, which became the first collaboration between two groups to debut at number one on the Hot 100. In November BTS won Artist of the Year at the American Music Awards, the first Asian act to do so, and played four sold out nights at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, their first shows in front of a live crowd since the pandemic began. Korean researchers estimated the band was adding about five billion dollars a year to the economy.[1] [2] [3]

Early 2022 was bumpier. Jin injured his left hand and needed surgery, and sang sitting down for much of their Grammy performance in April, where Butter also lost. In March they played three limited capacity concerts at Seoul's Olympic Stadium, the biggest gatherings the government had allowed since the pandemic began. On the thirty first of May they visited President Joe Biden at the White House to talk about the rise in anti Asian hate crimes. On the tenth of June they released Proof, a three disc anthology marking nine years together. It looked like a victory lap. Four days later, during their ninth anniversary celebrations, the members said something nobody expected.[1] [2] [3]

They would focus on solo work for a while. RM said he no longer knew what kind of group they were or what story to tell, and that after ten intense years he needed to step back. The world reported a hiatus, and Hybe, as Big Hit was now called, rushed to insist BTS were not splitting or even pausing. Its shares still plunged by about a quarter, wiping more than a billion dollars off the company's value. In 2024 prosecutors charged three employees of Hybe subsidiaries with insider trading for dumping shares before the news, which they denied. On the fifteenth of October 2022 BTS played a concert in Busan to support the city's bid for a world expo. It was the last time all seven would perform together for years.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Solo years in uniform

Two days after Busan, Big Hit confirmed what fans had dreaded. All seven would do their military service, and the old hope of an exemption, given in the past to Olympic medallists and prize winning classical musicians, was gone. J-Hope went first as a solo artist, releasing Jack in the Box and, on the thirty first of July 2022, headlining Lollapalooza in Chicago, the first South Korean act to top a main stage at a major American festival. RM's album Indigo reached number three in America that December. Jin released The Astronaut, co-written with Coldplay, sang it with them on stage in Buenos Aires, and on the thirteenth of December 2022 he enlisted at an army base in Yeoncheon.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The solo records kept coming even as the members disappeared into the army. In March 2023 Jimin's Like Crazy made him the first Korean solo artist to debut at number one on the Hot 100. Suga released D-Day as Agust D and took it on his first solo world tour. In July Jungkook's Seven, with Latto, also went to number one and became the fastest song ever to pass a billion Spotify streams. RM later said he had to talk nervous executives out of cleaning up one of its racier lines. V followed with the jazzy EP Layover, and Jungkook's album Golden sold more than two million copies in its first week. In September 2023 all seven renewed their contracts with Big Hit.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

J-Hope enlisted in April 2023. Suga began alternative service as a social worker that September, after being judged unfit for regular duty, which Korean media linked to his old shoulder injury. RM and V went in on the eleventh of December 2023, and Jimin and Jungkook the next day, together under the army's buddy system. In August 2024 Suga fell off an electric scooter outside his home in Seoul after drinking, and police revoked his licence. He apologised publicly, pleaded guilty and was fined fifteen million won. Jin came out first, on the twelfth of June 2024, greeted at the gate by RM playing Dynamite on a saxophone. A few weeks later he carried the Olympic torch in Paris. J-Hope was discharged that October.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Hybe spent those years in turmoil. In 2024 Bang fell into a bitter public feud with Min Hee-jin, head of the label behind the girl group NewJeans, with each side accusing the other, and it ended up in the courts. That October a lawmaker revealed internal Hybe reports full of harsh gossip about other idols. In December financial regulators began looking into Bang's dealings before the 2020 stock market listing. The last BTS members came home in June 2025. RM and V were discharged on the tenth, Jimin and Jungkook on the eleventh and Suga later that month. RM later admitted on a live stream that he had wondered countless times whether disbanding or pausing would be better, and then apologised for being so candid.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Arirang and the return

On the first of July 2025 all seven appeared together on a live stream and promised a new album. That month six of them moved into a house in Los Angeles, with Jin still out on his solo tour, and spent two months writing in four rooms at once with producers such as Diplo, El Guincho, Mike WiLL Made-It and Tame Impala's Kevin Parker. By the time Jin arrived there were more than a hundred songs. The band argued over direction. Most wanted to return to their hip hop roots, while Jin at first felt their biggest hits were their identity, until the others won him over. They also insisted on rewriting one English song almost entirely in Korean.[1] [2]

Their chairman's troubles deepened. In July 2025 regulators referred Bang Si-hyuk to prosecutors, and police raided Hybe's headquarters. He was questioned in September and barred from leaving the country. Investigators alleged that in 2019 he told early investors Hybe had no plans to go public, so they sold their shares to a private equity fund, and that a side deal then paid him around two hundred billion won once the company listed. In April 2026 police asked for a warrant to arrest him, but prosecutors sent the request back, saying there was not yet enough evidence to justify detaining him. Bang denies wrongdoing, and as of 2026 no court has ruled on the case.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The album was named Arirang, after Korea's best loved folk song, an idea that came from Bang and Hybe. The first known recording of that song was made in the United States in 1896 by seven Korean men at Howard University, a link the band made much of. Arirang came out on the twentieth of March 2026, led by Swim, an English language song written mainly by RM about the confusion the members felt before and after the army. The next night BTS played a free concert in Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul, walking to the stage along the old King's Road, with the show streamed live on Netflix around the world. Critics at NPR, the Guardian and the BBC called it a real return to form.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Arirang sold six hundred and forty one thousand units in its first American week, the biggest week for any group since the modern chart method began in 2014, and it stayed on top longer than any BTS album before it. Swim became their seventh number one single. The world tour opened in Goyang on the ninth of April 2026 and runs until March 2027. Demand was so fierce that Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, wrote to South Korea's president asking for more shows. On the nineteenth of July BTS sang Dynamite at the first ever World Cup final halftime show, at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, sharing the bill with Madonna, Shakira and Justin Bieber, before Spain beat Argentina.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

At the end of July 2026 all seven posted the same message saying they would not enter Arirang for the Grammys, after the Recording Academy created a new Asian pop category that required meaningful use of an Asian language. They said music should not be divided by region or language. Grammy chief Harvey Mason Jr said he was saddened. In August V revealed that the hearing in his right ear had fallen to about a third of his left and had worsened during his army service, while Jungkook said a shin injury had him close to a stress fracture. As of 2026 BTS are still on the road, the best selling act in South Korean history and, for millions, the group that took K-pop around the world.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The people around BTS

RM and Bang Si-hyuk. Bang signed RM first, in 2010, and built the whole group around the sixteen year old rapper, later saying he felt a duty to help him grow into a great artist. RM became the band's chief songwriter and spokesman. Their bond was tested when RM chafed at the pop direction of the Dynamite years, and it was Bang's idea to call the comeback album Arirang, which the band quickly accepted.[1] [2] [3]

Bang Si-hyuk and Park Jin-young. Before BTS, Bang was the musical partner of JYP Entertainment's founder, co-writing for g.o.d and the Wonder Girls. In 2003 the two shared a room while trying and failing to crack America, and one day Bang, who did the laundry, lost his temper because Park kept crumpling his socks. They stayed close friends, and critics say JYP's early sound owed as much to Bang as to Park.[1] [2]

Jimin and Jungkook. The two Busan natives have been close since their trainee days. They recorded covers together as gifts for fans, including a version of Charlie Puth's We Don't Talk Anymore in 2017, enlisted on the same day in December 2023 under the army's buddy system, and made the travel series Are You Sure together. Early in their service they ran a footrace against each other, and Jungkook won.[1] [2] [3]

Jungkook and RM. Jungkook had offers from seven companies and chose Big Hit because he was dazzled by RM's rapping, calling it a kind of fate. Years later the leader returned the favour. When label executives got nervous about an explicit line in Jungkook's solo hit Seven, RM told them to leave it alone, arguing that the youngest member was all grown up.[1] [2] [3]

BTS and ARMY. The fan club was named in 2014 and grew into one of the most organised fandoms in pop. Fans translate lyrics, phone radio stations, run chart campaigns and match the band's donations, as when they raised a million dollars for Black Lives Matter in about a day. The members credit them constantly, and ended their July 2026 Grammy statement by thanking ARMY.[1] [2] [3] [4]

BTS and Pdogg. Big Hit staff producer Pdogg worked with BTS before they debuted, co-writing and producing No More Dream, and it was Pdogg to whom the rapper Sleepy first mentioned a teenage RM. He remained head producer for years, stitching together parts from writers around the world, and on Arirang was involved in every stage for the first time, from writing to mastering.[1] [2] [3]

BTS and Coldplay. Chris Martin wrote My Universe for BTS, and in 2021 it became the first song by two groups to debut at number one in America. Martin joined BTS on stage at SoFi Stadium that December. In 2022 Coldplay co-wrote Jin's solo single The Astronaut and brought him on stage in Buenos Aires shortly before he enlisted. Jin has said his love of rock came largely through Coldplay.[1] [2] [3]

Suga and Halsey. Halsey sang on Boy with Luv in 2019 and performed it with BTS at the Billboard Music Awards. That December she released Suga's Interlude on her album Manic, a track Suga both produced and featured on. It was one of many outside collaborations for Suga, who has also written and produced for IU, Epik High and Psy.[1] [2]

Bang Si-hyuk and Min Hee-jin. Min joined Big Hit from SM Entertainment as chief brand officer and was given her own label, Ador, to launch the girl group NewJeans. In April 2024 Hybe accused her of trying to take the label independent and reported her to police. She called a press conference, accused Bang of undermining NewJeans and denied everything. The feud spilled into the courts.[1] [2] [3]

RM and Warren G. The two met in 2014 on the reality show American Hustle Life, where the West Coast veteran offered to make BTS a beat and kept in touch afterwards. In March 2015 they released a song together, P.D.D, which stood for Please Don't Die, aimed at the people who had mocked RM, then struggling with online hate.[1]

Rare facts about BTS

• BTS's debut single, No More Dream, only reached number one hundred and twenty four on the Korean chart. In 2013 nobody in Korea paid much attention to BTS or their tiny label. The debut single peaked far outside the top hundred, though the single album did better and reached the top five of the album chart.[1] [2]
• RM and Suga rewrote the lyrics of No More Dream more than twenty times before the debut. The song, about teenagers crushed by their parents' expectations, set the tone for BTS's early school trilogy. The two rappers kept reworking the words until the label was satisfied.[1]
• RM taught himself English largely by watching the sitcom Friends with his mother. RM says he learned English mostly from Friends DVDs, and he ended up giving the band's speech in English at the United Nations in 2018. He has had to tell the story on countless American talk shows.[1] [2]
• RM joined Big Hit at sixteen without telling his parents. Bang Si-hyuk offered the teenage rapper a place in 2010 and he accepted immediately. His parents wanted him to focus on studying, since he was one of the top students in the country.[1]
• A year before joining Big Hit, RM failed an audition at another label because he forgot his lyrics. He passed the first round at Big Deal Records in 2009 but blanked in the second. The rapper Sleepy swapped numbers with him anyway and later mentioned him to Big Hit producer Pdogg.[1]
• Before BTS, Suga produced a track honouring the victims of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. As a member of the Daegu hip hop crew D-Town in 2010, the young rapper then known as Gloss produced a song called 518-062 in memory of the uprising.[1]
• Suga once promised fans he would buy them meat if he made it, and he kept his word. On his twenty fifth birthday he donated beef to thirty nine orphanages in the name of ARMY, fulfilling a promise he had made back in 2014, when BTS were still struggling.[1]
• Suga reworked Samsung's signature phone ringtone, Over the Horizon. His new version of the famous tune was unveiled at Samsung's Unpacked event in August 2021. He also wrote and produced songs for IU, Epik High and Psy.[1]
• Suga gave five billion won to found a treatment centre for autistic children, and volunteers there as a music teacher. The centre at Severance Hospital in Seoul is named after him. He also co-wrote a clinical manual on using music in social skills therapy for children and teenagers with autism.[1]
• J-Hope's stage name comes from the myth of Pandora's box. When every evil escaped the box, hope was the only thing left inside. He chose the name to be a source of hope for fans and, as he put it, the hope of BTS.[1]
• J-Hope posted the most liked tweet in the world in 2018. It was a clip of him doing the In My Feelings dance challenge to the Drake song, and it beat every other post on the platform that year.[1]
• Jin had been scouted by SM Entertainment in the street years before Big Hit found him the same way. He turned down SM as a junior high school student. Later, while studying film and hoping to act, a Big Hit scout stopped him in the street because of his looks, and he auditioned as an actor.[1] [2]
• As an army drill instructor, Jin bought extra food for his soldiers, and some wept when he left. Jin served as an assistant training instructor with the fifth infantry division. He cried at his own discharge ceremony too, and a local council hung a banner thanking him.[1] [2]
• Jin pushed for the 2026 world tour to run about eight months longer than planned. The first plan had only a few months of dates. Jin argued that after the long break the band had promised to go and see fans everywhere, and that a short tour would break that promise.[1]
• V only became a trainee because he went along to support a friend at an audition. He had no plan to audition himself. He was signed after an audition in Daegu and then kept hidden from fans as the secret member until BTS debuted.[1] [2]
• V played the saxophone as a boy, and RM played Dynamite on a saxophone to welcome Jin out of the army. V began saxophone lessons in middle school with his father's support. In June 2024 RM greeted Jin at the gate of his base with a saxophone rendition of the band's biggest hit.[1] [2]
• The BTS habit of saying I purple you started with V in 2016. V coined the phrase at a fan meeting in November 2016. UNICEF later used it in an anti bullying campaign.[1]
• Jungkook had offers from seven companies after failing a television talent show audition. He was not picked for Superstar K in 2011, but scouts saw enough to make offers. He chose Big Hit after seeing RM rap, and spent the summer of 2012 training in dance in Los Angeles.[1] [2]
• Jungkook is the main producer of the BTS fan favourite Magic Shop. Magic Shop, from Love Yourself: Tear, was inspired by the neurosurgeon James Doty's memoir Into the Magic Shop. Jungkook also produced Love Is Not Over in 2015.[1] [2]
• In the army, Jungkook worked in the kitchen stirring giant pots, even at weekends. He told Rolling Stone that all he thought about while cooking for the troops was getting out to sing and dance again.[1]
• Jimin spent only six months as a trainee, the shortest of any member. He was the last to join after a teacher at his Busan arts high school, where he studied contemporary dance, suggested he try an entertainment company.[1]
• Ryan Gosling gave Jimin the guitar Ken plays in Barbie. One of Gosling's Ken outfits was inspired by what Jimin wore in the Permission to Dance video, so in 2023 the actor sent him the guitar as a thank you.[1]
• Mic Drop was inspired by Barack Obama dropping the microphone at his last White House Correspondents' Dinner. RM said the gesture sparked the song. The Steve Aoki remix with Desiigner became the first K-pop group song to reach the American top forty, in 2017.[1]
• Dynamite was produced on a laptop in David Stewart's bedroom at his parents' house. The British producer, a former session guitarist, said he still found it mind boggling that something so huge came from something so modest. The horns were played by a musician who had worked on Bruno Mars's Uptown Funk.[1]
• Bang Si-hyuk said Dynamite would never have been released if the 2020 tour had gone ahead. The English language single was chosen to lift the mood during the pandemic, after the stadium tour was postponed. It became their first American number one.[1]
• RM wrote the melody of Spring Day while walking through a park in Seoul. He came up with it in late 2016 at Saetgang Eco Park in Yeouido, inspired by dry leaves blowing off the trees, and said the lyrics were about old school friends he missed.[1]
• The first known recording of the song Arirang was made in America in 1896, by seven Korean men. It was captured on a wax cylinder at Howard University in Washington. BTS, another seven Korean men taking Korean music abroad, listened to it in a promotional video for their album Arirang.[1] [2]
• The track No. 29 on Arirang is a field recording of an ancient bronze bell. It captures the Sacred Bell of King Seongdeok, Korea's twenty ninth national treasure. RM said the track runs exactly as long as the bell keeps ringing after it is struck.[1] [2]
• The beat of Hooligan was built partly from the sound of sharpening knives. Spanish producer El Guincho combined two beats the band loved, adding clashing blades and strings sampled from a 1962 French film score. Jungkook came up with the concept.[1] [2]
• In 2007 Big Hit had just four employees and was close to bankruptcy. Bang kept the company alive until a 2009 hit by the trio 8Eight. By 2020 it was worth more than Korea's three biggest agencies combined.[1] [2]
• As a child, Bang Si-hyuk read Plutarch's Lives before starting elementary school. His father said he read all day long. Bang has also said he loves Duran Duran and cries easily at sentimental films.[1]
• During the 2018 World Cup, Mexican fans streamed BTS to thank South Korea for beating Germany. South Korea's win knocked out the defending champions and kept Mexico in the tournament, and Mexican radio played BTS songs as a thank you.[1]
• Seven microphones BTS used on tour sold at a charity auction for eighty three thousand two hundred dollars. They were the first authorised BTS items ever put up for auction, at a Grammy week MusiCares event in 2020, and fetched more than eight times their estimate.[1]
• One English song on Arirang was rewritten almost entirely in Korean at the band's insistence. The love song Please was recorded in English, but BTS pushed to put Korean lyrics back at the centre of their music and redid it.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.