Sometimes that image frays under the unforgiving glare of South Korean celebrity life, where there is rarely room for vulnerability. <\/p>\n
Earlier this year, Jung Kook, the youngest in the group, caused a stir with a frank, drunken livestream in which he swore. “I just want to live as I want,” he said. When concerned fans urged him to end the stream, he responded: “Please don’t tell me what to do.” <\/p>\n
A few months before, RM apologised profusely after his own honest livestream about the anxiety of reuniting and returning to the stage.<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t say the BTS members lack freedom,” Park says. “But as a group, they’ve become something like a national brand. That inevitably places them under enormous pressure – and it may be why some feel they’ve lost a sense of identity.”<\/p>\n
For loyal fans like Park Su-bin, the opportunity to watch them again is exciting enough. “Honestly, I wasn’t that into the title song, Swim. It’s good, but I was expecting stronger choreography and more Korean lyrics, something more like Idol,'” she says, referring to the high-energy hit from 2018 that blends South African rhythms with traditional Korean music.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a while since I watched BTS perform. I’m excited to be going to a BTS concert, but it still seems a bit surreal.”<\/p>\n
Another “light” fan says, “I don’t have many thoughts about it. I’m just excited for the concert”.<\/p>\n
As BTS takes to the stage again, and returns to Weverse, their fandom and their powerhouse performances will determine the verdict on their comeback.<\/p>\n
The one thing critics do agree on is that their legacy is assured. “I was covering K-pop before it was this gigantic world phenomenon,” Schwartz says. “And you know, at that time it was a question mark. Will K-pop become like a gigantic world phenomenon? Now there’s no question because of BTS.”<\/p>\n
Rather, the question is how much further can they go?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes that image frays under the unforgiving glare of South Korean celebrity life, where there is rarely room…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-519884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}