Jin: check. J Hope: check. And on Tuesday, RM and V: check.
That leaves only three members of the K-pop boy band BTS still doing their national service: Jimin, Jungkook and Suga. And when they too are discharged this month, their fans’ long wait will be over. BTS will be civilians again, and a vastly lucrative reunion can follow.
RM and V emerged from a base in Chuncheon, South Korea, on Wednesday in military fatigues. V, 29, carried flowers, while RM, 30, had a saxophone on which he gave a brief impromptu performance on one knee.
“There were tough and painful moments, of course,” RM said, as translated by The Korea Herald, “but during our service, I came to deeply appreciate the many people who have protected this country.”
BTS’s record label, Big Hit Music, had pleaded with fans to stay home and not make a circus of the members’ discharges: “We kindly ask fans to send their warm welcome and support from their hearts.” But hundreds of screaming, camera-wielding, flag-waving fans showed up anyway.
Nearly all able-bodied young men in South Korea are required to serve a year and a half of military duty.
At one point, there was talk that the members of BTS would be granted the same type of exemptions that Olympic medalists and some classical musicians get, and a new law allows pop stars who have contributed greatly to the nation’s reputation, like BTS, to delay their enlistment. But the band members decided to enlist, and to go on hiatus for the duration, leaving fans bereft.
The BTS members continued to release some music that had been recorded earlier. But the lucrative stadium tours and blockbuster albums of new music were put on hold.
Jimin and Jungkook will end their military service on Wednesday. Suga will be the last one to finish, on June 21. Unlike the other band members, he was performing alternative service in social work.
BTS began turning out pop hits in South Korea in 2014. By 2019, the rest of the world was catching on, and the bouncy hit “Dynamite” (“Shining through the city with a little funk and soul, So I’ma light it up like dynamite, whoa-oh-oh”) was a global smash, hitting No. 1 in the United States in 2020. Their follow up songs included “Butter” and “My Universe,” a collaboration with Coldplay.
That BTS was full of handsome guys who could dance did not hurt.
While their fellow enlisted men will become office workers or take up a trade after their military service, BTS will be returning to the recording studio and planning tours, very likely reigniting the BTS mania of the early part of the decade. “What I want to do most is perform,” RM said Wednesday. “I’ll work hard on the next album and return to the stage soon.”
Hybe, the entertainment company that releases BTS’s records, put up a giant sign on its building in Seoul this week reading, “We Are Back.” It could refer to the band or to the company itself, given the revenue stream expected to begin flowing again soon.
For American pop fans of a certain age, the obvious parallel is Elvis Presley, who ended his 18 months in the Army in Germany in 1960, setting off a similar frenzy.
Presley’s final Army paycheck was for $109.54. Returning to concerts and films, he raked in millions almost immediately. BTS can expect a similar windfall.
