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BTS will stage its long-awaited comeback concert on Saturday night at Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square, one of South Korea’s most famous landmarks which represents its royal heritage and political and cultural life.
In a free concert expected to draw tens of thousands of fans, the K-pop juggernaut’s seven members, all South Koreans, will perform songs from their first album in nearly four years, ARIRANG, whose title is taken from a beloved Korean folk tune.
BTS had been on hiatus because its members had to complete their mandatory military duties in South Korea. Observers predict the hour-long concert, which will be livestreamed on Netflix globally, will reaffirm their identity as a group that expanded from Korea to the world stage.
Pop culture commentator Jung Dukhyun says the selection of Gwanghwamun likely reflected a view that traditional Korean culture and local elements can resonate on a global scale, as seen in the success of the Netflix sensation KPop Demon Hunters.
The band’s comeback coincides with Korean entertainment’s rise in popularity around the world which, in North America, has seen a wave of hits including the Netflix series Squid Game, the Oscar-winning Parasite and the Tony Award-winning musical Maybe Happy Ending.
On their heels was KPop Demon Hunters, an American-produced movie that focused specifically on the magnetic power of K-pop as a genre. Its success rested largely on its soundtrack, which became the first to post four simultaneous Billboard top 10 hits, and which made the semi-fictional band behind them the first K-pop girl group to top the Hot 100. They were the first all-women band of any genre to do so since Destiny’s Child in 2001.
Their song Golden was the first K-pop track to top Billboard’s radio songs chart and — another first — won best original song at Sunday’s Academy Awards.
Kpop Demon Hunters is the most-watched film on Netflix of all time. The music has set a record for four simultaneous top 10 hits on Billboard Hot 100. UBC assistant professor of Asian Studies Ji-yoon An talks about the phenomenon.
BTS’s success in North America came just as that wave began to crest, and supported much of what came after. They were the first South Korean group to score a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 track in 2020, with Dynamite, and in 2017, they won the top social artist trophy at the Billboard Music Awards — breaking Justin Bieber’s six-year reign winning that category.
That win marked a turning point for K-pop in Western markets and reflected their social media-focused strategy, which brought them a level of wide-reaching and passionately supported fame that has sustained them since.
Arts and cultural landmark
Gwanghwamun Square is named after the huge main gate of nearby Gyeongbokgung, a royal palace for Korea’s Joseon dynasty, which ruled the peninsula for more than 500 years until its collapse in 1910.
Located in the heart of Seoul, the sprawling square is home to cultural and art events. It hosts giant statues of two of Korea’s most respected figures — King Sejong, who invented the Korean script in 1443, and navy admiral Yi Sun-shin, who defeated the Japanese invasion in the 16th century.
The square is also a symbol of South Korea’s young, resilient democracy, the site of massive rallies in times of political upheavals in recent years.
When then-President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law imposition in late 2024 triggered the most severe crisis for the country’s democracy in decades, protesters gathered in the square, calling for his ouster. Rallies blended politics and pop culture, with demonstrators waving colourful light sticks used at K-pop concerts and signing K-pop tracks such as Girls’ Generation’s Into the New World.
In a message posted on X on Wednesday, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called BTS “a proud artist of the Republic of Korea” and expressed hope that the concert will show “our beautiful cultural heritage and the charm of K-culture.”
Besides about 20,000 ticketed fans at the square, about 240,000 others are expected to fill nearby areas to watch the concert on temporary screens. Authorities plan to block roads, have subway trains pass through some stations and close the Gyeongbokgung place.
