BTS Cancels World Tour

The seven men all have a lot more weighing on their minds these days. Their importance as cultural ambassadors for South Korea has become so great that this past December, in an unprecedented move, the country’s government changed a law, allowing the group to wait until age 30 to enlist in the military. (Previously, it had been 28.) But with Jin turning 30 at the end of 2022, BTS faces a lengthy period with at least one member missing — and should they all choose to serve at the same time, as some stock analysts in South Korea have predicted, a group hiatus could last about 18 months (the minimum length of service).

That’s bad news for HYBE. BTS is the dominant engine behind the company’s income, bringing in about 85% of its 796.3 billion won ($680 million) in total 2020 revenue. Though HYBE has begun diversifying its portfolio of talent — signing new K-pop acts and, starting next year, partnering with Universal Music Group (UMG) on a U.S.-based boy band talent show — it remains unclear whether anything could replace BTS on the company’s balance sheet.

On top of these pressures, both the group and the agency are coming under scrutiny for BTS’ recent chart successes, which fans of some competing acts say are achieved through concerted “manipulation” antithetical to the charts’ purpose of accurately highlighting the world’s most popular acts. After “Butter” and the Ed Sheeran co-write “Permission to Dance” debuted atop the Hot 100, where “Butter” ruled for nine nonconsecutive weeks, some noted how the group’s fans, known as ARMY, organize themselves on social media, using tactics like bulk purchases of physical albums and coordinated digital buying to influence chart performance.



Both HYBE and BTS reject accusations that chart manipulation accounts for the group’s success. BTS’ members say that they accept that their fame will peak and, at some point, evaporate — after all, BTS has already outlasted the industry-standard seven-year life span of a K-pop group. In the meantime, though, their runaway success has caused a reckoning in the industry. And whether BTS’ mobilization of fandom on a global scale can be sustained — and possibly be replicated for other acts — will not only decide the future of BTS and HYBE, but also define their legacy.

HYBE was “very smart in understanding that the future of music needs to look at the present — that music is what people use to identify themselves,” says Mark Mulligan, a music-industry analyst at the consultancy MIDiA Research. The rise of streaming in recent years, he adds, has loosened the emotional bond between artists and consumers. “Outside of Korea, in the U.S. and the U.K., at a time when BTS was still singing mostly in Korean, there was a whole generation of teenagers who just knew that there was a hole in their musical soul. They knew something was missing, but they didn’t know what it was. And then, suddenly, [BTS] comes along, and they say, ‘This makes sense. I can say who I am through being a fan of this band.’ ”

What the future of BTS looks like, and what it will be most remembered for, remains more of an unknown — especially to the group itself. “When our history is over, it’ll be clearer. When the dust settles and we come down from our pedestal, we’ll be able to tell,” says RM. “At the moment, we’re standing in the eye of the cyclone. I don’t think we or anyone else can accurately say anything.”



Whether it’s performing live or in one of its technicolor music videos, BTS has always projected a kind of debonair effortlessness: flawless dancing, smooth live vocals, perfectly calibrated harmonies. But as its members tell it, being BTS has not been easy for a few years now.

To anyone paying attention, this isn’t a shock. Back in 2018, after winning the top prize at the year-end Mnet Asia Music Awards ceremony, most of BTS broke down in tears at the podium, and Jin confessed that they had considered breaking up earlier that year due to emotional hardship. Recalling that moment today, the band insists quitting was never seriously on the table but admits its members have suffered from burnout.

“We used to get the monthly calendar with work scheduled on 28.5 days,” says Jin — a grueling though not unheard of schedule for K-pop groups. During their contract renewal negotiations in the same year as their Mnet appearance, they received a monthlong vacation for the following year, their first real break since they had joined the company as trainees. “The road up to here has been arduous. It’s taken a toll on my health, and I think we’ve put in every bit of our youth and more,” says lead vocalist Jungkook.

Here in South Korea — a patriotic nation that sees itself as a small state squeezed by superpowers like the United States, China and Russia — the idea of victory on an international stage has always carried tremendous weight. So the fact that a Korean act performing songs in the Korean language has moved so many people beyond its own borders has become an enormous source of national pride — and placed a degree of pressure on BTS far beyond that of any usual cultural export.

The South Korean defense ministry’s December announcement that it would allow pop stars to delay their military draft and continue their careers — with strict qualifications that, so far, only BTS meets — was historic. The law currently exempts only certain elite athletes, classical musicians and dancers, and while BTS isn’t fully exempt, the decision is a clear indication of how pivotal to the country’s soft power BTS has become. In late July, President Moon Jae-in appointed BTS the Special Presidential Envoy for Future Generations and Culture, giving the group diplomatic passports. That status pushed it to the front of the line for COVID-19 vaccinations — a real privilege in a country that has struggled with shortages — and in September, the group is set to make its third appearance at the United Nations General Assembly. “We expect BTS to make great contributions to raising our country’s prestige as a leading nation in the post-COVID age,” the president’s office, known as Blue House, said in a statement at the time.