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      Did Crush Snub Black Fans at a Concert in South Korea?

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      The singer Crush apologized for a “misunderstanding” after the exchange, which highlights what experts call K-pop’s uneasy relationship with Black culture.It happens so fast in the videos that you need to rewatch them to notice: As Crush, a South Korean R&B singer, high-fives fans during a recent performance, he avoids an area where some Black concertgoers have extended their hands.A fan on Twitter called the episode, at a music festival in Seoul this month, an act of discrimination. When others piled on, some of Crush’s supporters pushed back, saying that videos showed him skipping other parts of the packed audience and warning fans about overcrowding.Crush apologized last week for what he called a “misunderstanding,” telling his 2.7 million Instagram followers that he had avoided high-fiving some fans out of concern for their safety. He also told The New York Times that he loved and respected Black culture and had not meant to offend anyone.“I would never intentionally act in a way that would disrespect nor offend any individual,” he said.The debate over the episode has called attention to what experts call an old problem: the K-pop industry’s struggle to develop the level of cultural sensitivity that fans in the United States and elsewhere expect.The criticism also highlights resentment that has built up for years among many Black fans who feel that K-pop acts adopt their culture but do not respect them, just as earlier generations of white musicians appropriated Black music and reaped the riches.“There are Black fans who love K-pop so much,” said CedarBough T. Saeji, an expert on the K-pop industry at Pusan National University in South Korea. “But they also do have a bone to pick with the way that their fandom has been ignored, and the way that their concerns about things like cultural appropriation have also been ignored.”The Big PictureCrush, 30, whose real name is Shin Hyo-seob, is an A-list K-pop star at a time when South Korea’s cultural exports are winning legions of new fans abroad. As the K-pop industry becomes increasingly international, more of its lyrics are being written in English, and agencies that promote K-pop acts are opening offices abroad.Crush’s record label, P Nation, was founded in 2018 by the singer Psy, whose breakout 2012 hit, “Gangnam Style,” helped K-pop carve out an international profile.The label’s chief executive, Lionel Kim, said it had always tried aggressively to scrutinize its artists’ content for cultural sensitivity.“We want to reach as many fans as we can around the world,” Kim said in an interview. “We’re extremely cautious to ensure that our artists and music videos do not disrespect any ethnicity or culture.”The K-pop group Exo performing at the Winter Olympics in South Korea in 2018.Sergei Ilnitsky/European Pressphoto AgencyBut gaps in awareness have been frequent in South Korea, an ethnically homogeneous society that has generally been slow to welcome other cultures at home.“Some people don’t even know what counts as racist or not — and that includes artists,” said Gyu Tag Lee, a professor of cultural studies at George Mason University’s South Korea campus.Members of Exo, a boy band in Seoul, have been accused of making racist remarks during a live broadcast in which they applied makeup that resembled blackface. And last year, the Korean American rapper Jay Park removed the music video for his song “DNA Remix” after fans noted that some of the performers, who were not Black, wore hairstyles that included Afros, braids and dreadlocks.A Rising StarCrush has explored R&B, hip-hop, soul, jazz and other genres in his decade-long career. He began writing rap lyrics in middle school and listened to Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, James Ingram and other Black musicians in high school, he has told the South Korean news media. In 2018, he released a song that paid homage to Stevie Wonder.Last month, Crush released “Rush Hour,” a hit single with the rapper J-Hope of BTS. The lyrics are a mix of English and Korean, the style riffs on funk and hip-hop, and the music video was filmed on a New York City-inspired set.But frustration toward Crush has been building among Black K-pop fans since 2016, when he performed on a Korean television show wearing a mask with dark skin, big lips and frizzy hair — and did not apologize after the backlash that followed.Some fans were also disappointed when Crush removed an Instagram post two years ago about his donation to a George Floyd memorial fund in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Crush’s label, P Nation, told The Times last week that Crush had archived that post, along with dozens of others that were not related to music, later that year. The FalloutAfter the high-fiving episode at the 2022 Someday Pleroma festival this month, some Crush allies seemed to backtrack on their initial support.J-Hope “liked” Crush’s apology on Instagram. Devin Morrison, a Black singer in Los Angeles who has also collaborated with Crush, wrote on Twitter that he had been astounded to see criticism of “an artist who has treated me and my (Black) friends with nothing but respect and kindness.”But J-Hope’s like and Morrison’s tweet later disappeared. Neither artist responded to requests for comment.Some Black fans took a nuanced view of the episode, saying that they were frustrated less with Crush than with the culture of racial bias that they feel pervades the K-pop industry.Videos of Crush “skipping over the Black fans seemed unlike him, but it didn’t seem like it was unlike K-pop,” said Akeyla Vincent, 32, an African American public-school teacher in South Korea. Melissa Limenyande, 29, a Black South African who also teaches in South Korea, said she believed Crush’s explanation that he had acted out of concern for fans’ safety.At the same time, she said, she has struggled to reconcile her enjoyment of K-pop with what she sees as its creators’ insensitivity toward other cultures.“I like these artists so much and I love their music and their personalities,” she said. “But if I can take my time to learn about their culture or where they come from, why can’t they do the same?” More

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      K-pop Queens Blackpink Hit No. 1 With CDs and ‘Signed’ Digital Albums

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      The girl group tops the Billboard 200 for the first time with “Born Pink,” which had 102,000 equivalent sales — including 64,000 on CD.It may be a streaming world, but getting to No. 1 on the Billboard album chart these days often comes down to selling a lot of vinyl LPs or even those semi-passé silver data platters known as CDs.Back in April, Tyler, the Creator catapulted 119 spots to the top when his album “Call Me if You Get Lost” came out on vinyl nearly a year after its initial release. The following month, Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” had solid streaming numbers but relied on vinyl to nab the year’s biggest opening (still). And in June, the K-pop kings BTS landed at No. 1 with mediocre streams but big CD sales of a compilation album, “Proof.”This week, another K-pop group, the four-woman Blackpink, rockets to the top with physical sales.“Born Pink,” the quartet’s second full-length studio album, becomes its first No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with the equivalent of 102,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. That total includes 37 million streams — a modest sum, representing only about a quarter of the group’s composite sales number for the week. The rest is attributed to old-fashioned purchases of “Born Pink” as a compete unit, including 64,000 made for the 17 different configurations of the album on CD.As Billboard noted, many of these CD editions came in collectible packages — with alternative covers, autographs and other goodies like postcards and stickers — that were initially priced as high as $50, but were discounted over the course of last week. Blackpink also sold a “signed digital album” through its website for $4.99, and marked its standard downloadable album down to $3.99.Those sales helped push “Born Pink” past Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” the streaming behemoth that has occupied the top slot on and off for 11 weeks. In its 20th week on the chart, “Un Verano” falls to No. 2 with the equivalent of 93,000 sales, mostly from streams.Another K-pop group, NCT 127, opens at No. 3 this week with “2 Baddies”; most of its 58,500 equivalent sales were for CDs, with the album’s 12 tracks garnering fewer than four million streams. By comparison, the 23-track “Verano” has been averaging 130 million to 140 million clicks a week for the last couple of months.Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is in fourth place, notching its 88th time in the Top 10 since early 2021. Since the Billboard 200 began in 1956, only five other titles have appeared more times in the chart’s Top 10. All of them were movie soundtracks or Broadway cast recordings from 1965 or before, like “South Pacific,” with 90 weeks charting that high, and “My Fair Lady,” with 173.Also this week, the Weeknd’s hits collection “The Highlights” is No. 5. More

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      Blackpink and the Limits of K-Pop Maximalism

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      The genre’s more-is-more moment might be coming to an end, and younger acts like Aespa and NewJeans point a way forward.As K-pop was broadening its global ambitions in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it was also expanding its appetite, becoming the hungriest pop music scene on the planet. It feasted especially on American pop, hip-hop, R&B and dance music, alchemizing it all into a maximalist fantasia, creating an aesthetic of absurdist excess that became, for a while, that world’s most progressive and most popular approach.Acts like the YG Entertainment girl group 2NE1 thrived in that environment (along with its boy band compatriots BigBang), and helped set the stage for the genre’s worldwide takeover. Here was music — largely masterminded by the producer Teddy Park — that was curious, chaotic and cocksure. Other pop scenes seemed to dematerialize in its wake.Blackpink, the next-generation YG girl group that debuted in 2016, seemed poised to carry that torch with the early success of singles like “Whistle,” “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” and “How You Like That.” But by the time of its first full-length release, “The Album,” in 2020, the group’s music had become somehow more bombastic and more brittle than that of its predecessors, and the blueprint was showing its seams.“Born Pink,” the second full-length Blackpink album, is in theory an opportunity to innovate, both for the group and for the genre itself. And it finds Blackpink — Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, Rosé — at a crossroads: whether to continue its high-energy sonic collision; whether to fully embrace the English-language market; whether to dismantle its own house.The first single, “Pink Venom,” is classic Blackpink — which is to say, pandemonium stitched so tight it achieves its own internal logic, both caffeinated and fatiguing all at once. Jisoo’s singing is as rich and austere as ever, and Jennie’s rapping is flexible and dotted with clever little filigrees.“Pink Venom” plays like a theme song, more a jingle for the group than a pure musical statement. And it is something of a relief that the album doesn’t over-index on this approach, which has become a genre default.“Born Pink” is occasionally galvanic, and occasionally iterative. When the group does push into new territory — or more accurately, unshackles itself from familiar ground — it doesn’t leave much of an impact. “The Happiest Girl” is a brittle melodrama of a piano ballad, and “Yeah Yeah Yeah” is a cheerful ’80s pop simulacrum that also nods to the Weeknd and Daft Punk.Four of the songs are wholly in English, including “Hard to Love,” performed in full by Rosé (Blackpink is far more effective in this idiom than, say, BTS). And there’s cursing as well — not new for the group, but still a pointed gesture.Densely stacked production remains central to the group’s mission and positioning, especially on the songs Park worked on. And throughout the album, there is intense sonic layering, with G-funk swirls and classical music string samples and references that are so buried that they might not even be there at all. “Still Tippin’” on “Typa Girl”? “Mighty D-Block (2 Guns Up)” on “Pink Venom”? “My Baby Takes the Morning Train” on “Yeah Yeah Yeah”? Who can say?The smorgasbord of Blackpink, or 2NE1 before it, was at least in part a reaction to an earlier wave of girl groups that helped establish K-pop’s ambitions and scale, but whose dalliances with Western influences were more glancing.Last month, one of the crucial acts of that era, Girls’ Generation, released a new album, “Forever 1,” 15 years after its debut. More than a decade ago, Girls’ Generation was among the first, if not the first, K-pop acts to release an album on an American major label. But its ambitions aren’t as relentless as Blackpink’s.“Forever 1” is a refreshing throwback to a less agitated moment in the genre. The production is largely mellifluous and bright, and the singing is sweet and uncomplicated. It is redolent of an era in which K-pop was still establishing its own grammar, before it voraciously consumed everyone else’s. There are light flickers of hip-hop and new jack swing, as on “Seventeen” and “You Better Run.”But in the main, this is classicist music — the sheer brightness of the piano on “Closer,” the light sashay on “Summer Night.” It posits the music not as a world killer, but as a respite and a dream.As compelling as “Forever 1” is, it doesn’t feel of the moment, more like a rediscovered memento. That’s especially clear when it’s contextualized not simply alongside Blackpink, but also the intriguing wave of girl groups that has arrived in that group’s wake, identifying the contours of its success and building upon them.Of those acts, Aespa has been the most vital in recent years, and its recent EP, “Girls,” is one of the year’s most impressive K-pop releases precisely because of its dual mastery of the intricate and the elegant. That’s captured in its closing run: “Black Mamba,” a warrior stomp that channels flamboyant early 2000s pop, the throwback up-tempo ballad “Forever,” then “Dreams Come True,” which feels like a nod to K-pop’s earliest engagements with R&B.By contrast, Itzy stands out for its resolute quirk. Its recent “Checkmate” EP continues the group’s boisterous mayhem, with vocals that are intensely alert and jubilant, and production that seems to be bubbling in real time. “365” recalls industrial or avant-garde club music, and “Racer” sounds like Disney theme park music run through a glitter factory.Finally, and perhaps most promisingly, there’s NewJeans, which has just released a stellar self-titled debut EP that’s utterly cool and poised. The production is sensuous and restrained, and the singing is both lustrous and unhurried.On the surface, NewJeans harks back to an earlier, pre-2NE1, unhectic moment in K-pop. But its submerged references are deeply modern, especially the detour into New Jersey club music on “Cookie.” NewJeans deploys its contemporary reference points in service of a throwback idea, though. Or perhaps more pointedly, it’s learned all of the lessons the world has to offer, and is bringing them back home. More

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      Emmy Success for ‘Squid Game’ Is Hailed in South Korea

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      After the dystopian Netflix drama picked up multiple wins, Koreans celebrated the awards as the latest example of their country’s rise as a cultural powerhouse.SEOUL — First it was the movie “Parasite.” Then Yuh-Jung Youn, the star of “Minari.” Now, “Squid Game.”The dystopian Netflix drama’s success at the Emmys on Tuesday — including the top acting prize for its star, Lee Jung-jae, a first for a foreign-language show — was greeted with cheers in South Korea and hailed as the latest example of the country’s rise as a cultural powerhouse.Major Korean news outlets such as MBC and Yonhap made the news the lead story on their websites. Chosun Ilbo, one of the country’s largest newspapers, said “Squid Game” had written a “new history in K-drama.”“It seems like South Korean productions are getting more and more recognized internationally, which makes me excited,” said Lee Jae, a commercial producer in Seoul, who binge-watched the series as soon as it came out last year.In the show, which was produced by Netflix and became its most watched series ever, 456 desperate contestants are pitted against one another to the death for a cash prize of nearly $40 million. Players must survive through several rounds of children’s games in order to win.After its release last September, the show skyrocketed to popularity, becoming a sensation in not only South Korea but also on a global scale. At the time, the series outperformed other popular non-English shows like “Money Heist” and “Lupin,” according to Ted Sarandos, a co-chief executive officer and chief content officer for Netflix. At a business conference last year, he said that “Squid Game” was “blowing past all of them.”The show’s success is the latest in a string of international accolades for South Korean productions. In 2020, “Parasite,” the class satire directed by Bong Joon Ho, became the first foreign-language movie to win the Academy Award for Best Film. Last year, Youn, a veteran Korean star, the best supporting actress Oscar for her role in “Minari,” the film about a hard-luck family of Korean immigrants in the United States.Those earlier awards signaled a growing acceptance of foreign-language productions, said Daniel Martin, a film studies professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He said the success of “Squid Game” at the Emmys could be “a sign of hopefully a generational change.”While audiences might “go back to not caring about non-English content, ‘Squid Game’s’ win shows that viewers are receptive to Korean content, which is encouraging,” Martin said.South Korea has emerged as an entertainment juggernaut in recent years, captivating international audiences with K-pop bands such as BTS, as well as hit TV shows and critically acclaimed movies.Most recently, “Extraordinary Attorney Woo,” a Korean feel-good show about a young autistic lawyer, has been the most watched non-English-language program on Netflix in the past several weeks.For “Squid Game,” the Emmys are only its latest achievement. In February, the drama scooped up multiple prizes at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, including lead performer honors for Lee and Jung Ho-yeon.Lee, who is considered one of the most successful actors in South Korea, began his career as a model before starring in a number of hit Korean films, playing characters including romantic leads and cutthroat gangsters. His directorial debut, “Hunt,” an espionage thriller, was released in South Korea last month.On social media and online forums, his fans poured on the praise.“To South Korea’s Lee Jung-jae! Congratulations on winning the best lead actor. You are an actor who gives his all into his work and to his fans. I applaud you, someone whose hard work deserves such accomplishments,” said one fan on Twitter.“Wow, Lee Jung-jae won the award for best actor. He really is amazing,” another fan tweeted.In his acceptance speech, Lee acknowledged the support of his fans at home and their love for the show. “I’d like to share this honor with my family, friends and our precious fans watching from South Korea. Thank you!” he said. More

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      DJ Khaled’s Latest All-Star Album, ‘God Did,’ Is His Fourth No. 1

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      The LP, featuring Drake, Kanye West and others, had the equivalent of 107,500 sales in the United States last week. The K-pop group Twice wasn’t far behind, with 100,000 at No. 3.Each new LP by DJ Khaled, hip-hop’s indomitable guru of positivity, is an all-star summit, chocked with A-list guest stars. “God Did,” his 13th studio album, which opens at No. 1 on Billboard’s latest chart, is no different. Its 18 tracks feature Drake, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Rick Ross, Travis Scott, Roddy Ricch, Eminem, Future, Kanye West, SZA, 21 Savage and three Lils — Wayne, Durk and Baby — as well as a posthumous appearance by Juice WRLD.“God Did,” DJ Khaled’s fourth album to top the chart, had the equivalent of 107,500 sales in the United States in its first week out, including 130 million streams and 9,500 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate. Among the configurations of “God Did” in physical form is a $40 boxed set that comes with a Funko Pop figurine of the artist.Also this week, the K-pop girl group Twice opens at No. 3 with a seven-track mini-album, “Between 1&2,” with 100,000 sales that relied heavily on collectible CD packages (17 in all). Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” falls to No. 2 after its ninth time in the peak spot; the biggest album of the year so far, “Un Verano” has been bouncing between the top two slots on the chart for 17 weeks now.Kendrick Lamar’s “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,” which opened at No. 1 back in May, rises 20 spots to No. 4 after coming out on vinyl; of its 55,000 equivalent sales last week, 36,000 were on the LP format. At No. 5, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” notches its 85th week in the Top 10, tying the run set by Peter, Paul and Mary’s self-titled debut album from 1962, with iconic folk songs like “If I Had a Hammer.” More

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      Blackpink’s Genre-Clashing Return, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Blake Shelton, Chloe Moriondo and Madonna.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Blackpink, ‘Pink Venom’Over the four years leading to its 2020 debut album, Blackpink — Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, Rosé — became one of K-pop’s biggest global success stories: musically modern, engaged with pop from around the world, versatile. The first single from the group’s upcoming second album, “Born Pink” (due next month) has the comfort of anarchy.  Every four bars, a new approach enters — familiar K-pop elasticity, loose Middle Eastern themes, gaudy rock, West Coast rap, and more. It exists out where maximalism moves past philosophy to aesthetic. JON CARAMANICAMadonna, ‘Get Together’ (Jacques Lu Cont Vocal Edit)The remixes on Madonna’s “Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones,” out Friday, throb, zigzag and shimmer, highlighting the pop superstar’s deep connection to the dance floor — starting with her 1983 single “Holiday” and wrapping with “I Don’t Search I Find,” the glorious house standout on her most recent studio album, “Madame X” (its lyrics give the collection its name). As a full body of work, Madonna’s 2005 LP “Confessions on a Dance Floor” represents her most potent love letter to the form, and the Jacques Lu Cont Vocal Edit remix of its “Get Together,” available digitally for the first time, is a refreshing break from the (still great!) 4 a.m.-at-the-club pound that marks most of the set. Replacing its oozing synths with a snaking guitar riff, the track rides nearly like an indie-rock song that eventually glitches out and finds a way home again. CARYN GANZ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ), ‘[] vȯ)) ̷̨ʅ (۝ʅ(Ɵʅ():::()̵̳̗̊(Ɵʅ()vȯ)) ̷̨ʅ)’This garble of characters is an alias of the innovative electronic music producer Kieran Hebden (also known as Four Tet). His fleet and cheeky new song is indebted to sensual garage and boisterous house. CARAMANICAZedd, Maren Morris and Beauz ‘Made You Say’Like Zedd and Maren Morris’s previous collaboration, the unavoidable pop smash “The Middle,” “Make You Say” is the expertly engineered product of a whole cadre of collaborators: This time around, that includes co-writing credits from the sibling D.J. duo Beauz and the thirst trap aficionado Charlie Puth. All throughout, Morris hopscotches nimbly across Zedd’s syncopated arrangement and sing-songy melody, but the song is at its best when it really lets her rip, contrasting the grainy texture of her voice with the sleek surfaces of Zedd’s production. “You got your arms around her when you sleep,” she belts with alluring sass, “but I’m the one you dream about.” LINDSAY ZOLADZIsabella Lovestory, ‘Sexo Amor Dinero’An industrial post-reggaeton thumper about the sweat at the intersection of money and sex. CARAMANICAChloe Moriondo, ‘Fruity’The ever-evolving Chloe Moriondo — a young musician who basically came of age on her YouTube channel — makes an exhilarating pivot to hyperpop on “Fruity,” the first single from her forthcoming album, “Suckerpunch.” The song begins with Moriondo singing in her signature, sweetly muttered register atop some bright, pulsating synths, but as it builds in intensity her vocals become increasingly urgent and start to warp like melting plastic. “So close I can almost taste,” she sings of a “fresh and fruity” crush who she compares to a whole litany of sugary treats, building toward a chorus that’s deliciously hysterical and relentlessly catchy. ZOLADZPony, ‘Peach’It turns out that Pony, the tuneful grunge-pop band from Toronto, is quite aptly named: Earlier this year, the vocalist and guitarist Sam Bielanski announced a new gig: voicing a character in a “My Little Pony” cartoon. The charismatic pull of Bielanski’s vocals are on full display on the group’s new, ’90s-alt-rock-nodding single “Peach,” a bittersweet tale of love bombing and, eventually, cold clarity. “Picturing the salt of the beach,” Bielanski sings on the chorus, as a kind of personal reminder, “’Cause I don’t wanna drown in the taste of this peach.” ZOLADZBlake Shelton, ‘No Body’A sashaying splash of early ’90s power-country revivalism from Blake Shelton, a superstar who’s traversed many styles with ease in his career, but never quite owned one. Here he’s reviving a once-rowdy sound and nodding to Brooks & Dunn (“Don’t wanna scoot the boots with nobody”) — a convincing mimic, as ever. CARAMANICANick Hakim, ‘Happen’“Happen,” from the Brooklyn-based indie musician Nick Hakim, is a hypnotic, woozily romantic ballad that nonetheless contains flashes of melancholic darkness: The muted, sludgy acoustic guitar conjures Elliott Smith, while the close-miked, near-whispered vocals are faintly reminiscent of the softer side of the Deftones. That overcast sound, though, balances out the openhearted nature of Hakim’s lyrics, which are almost devotional in their description of a transformative love. “The sweetest angel fell into my world,” he sings. “She gives me reason, was lost for a damn long time.” ZOLADZ More

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      BTS Ponders Its Future, and South Korea’s Economy Warily Takes Note

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      The band’s label saw its stock price plunge, and the possibility that the K-pop group won’t tour as pandemic restrictions ease threatens to reverberate through South Korea’s economy.The fallout from BTS’s announcement on Tuesday that the K-pop juggernaut would be taking a break as members explore solo careers was immediate and drastic.In just a day, the stock price of the group’s management label, HYBE, plummeted 28 percent to 139,000 won — or $108 — its lowest price since the company went public nearly two years ago, shedding $1.7 billion in market value. The stock price has barely moved since.The drastic plunge underscores how South Korea’s best-selling boy band has become not only a cultural sensation but also a powerful stakeholder in South Korea’s economy.Since the group’s debut in 2013, BTS has raked in billions of dollars through album sales, concert tickets and social media. Its YouTube channel alone, which is the 20th largest in the world, can generate up to $2 million a month. By 2020, the group was contributing $3.5 billion annually to the nation’s economy, according to the Hyundai Research Institute.Japanese fans of BTS sharing mementos of the band at a cafe in Seoul on Wednesday.Kim Hong-Ji/ReutersEven during the pandemic, which devastated the live concert industry, BTS drove a 58 percent increase in HYBE’s revenue, according to the company’s year-end reports for 2021. The label raked in a 1.3 trillion won last year, nearly a billion U.S. dollars.The group’s financial contribution to South Korea’s economy had only been expected to grow as pandemic restrictions eased, according to the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute, which predicted that a single BTS concert could generate upward of $500 million or more.News of the group’s planned hiatus convulsed the internet once the group posted its video announcement, which drew over 16 million views in two days. The group’s fans, who call themselves Army, swarmed social media in expressing support — and anguished distress — over the news.“Thank you BTS for being our home, for your beautiful music that enlightens our life, for your love & happiness to us,” one Twitter user posted. “We’ll support you. We’re always here for you. We’ll wait for you. ARMY FOREVER. We love you.”Fans were particularly confused by the term “hiatus,” which was used in the English translations in the original video. Reports in South Korean media outlets were quick to link the announcement to the fact that Jin, the oldest member of the group, would need to enlist for mandatory military service by the end of this year.Speculation about the group’s possible disbandment led to a quick backpedaling of statements by the label and the group members themselves.News organizations reported the group was not taking a hiatus, but that group members were pivoting to focus more on their individual careers. The group will “remain active in various different formats,” according to the statement.RM, the group’s leader, posted on the social media site Weverse on Thursday, saying that many people had sent him messages assuming the group was breaking up.A mural depicting RM, the leader of BTS, in Goyang, South Korea. Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Although it’s not like I didn’t anticipate this or was oblivious that this could happen, I still feel bitter,” he said, explaining that his intentions were to communicate openly with fans on the group’s reflections of the past decade and not to announce that the group was disbanding.Jungkook, the youngest BTS member, also tried to clarify matters in a live video stream on Thursday. “We don’t have any thoughts of breaking up,” he said, adding that BTS still had plans to perform in the future.In Tuesday’s announcement video, members gathered around a table and spoke candidly about the intense pressures they face to constantly churn out music and deliver, ultimately leading to their decision to temporarily pursue solo careers.“I felt like I was trapped and couldn’t get out,” said Namjoon, who explained that he felt the years of constantly being in the spotlight as a K-pop idol didn’t leave him much room for personal growth. More

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      BTS Says It’s Taking a Break, but Promises It’s Not Permanent

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      Members of the K-pop juggernaut said in a video conversation that they wanted time to explore their individual artistic identities.After nearly a decade together, the seven members of BTS need some time apart.The Korean boy band released a video on Tuesday discussing the members’ desire to take a break from their current arrangement in order to explore their individual music careers; the move, they said, would also take some pressure off their lives as international pop sensations.“We’ve talked among ourselves several times and we believe it’s good to take some time apart,” J-Hope, one of the members, said in the video. “I hope that people don’t think negatively about this step and that they see this is a healthy, important part of our plan that will let BTS grow stronger.”But messages of support and heartbreak from the group’s dedicated fan base — known as Army — became tinged with confusion on Tuesday when news organizations reported that the entertainment company associated with the Grammy-nominated band had released a statement saying that BTS was not, in fact, taking a hiatus and that its members were simply focusing more on solo projects. The statement said BTS will “remain active in various different formats.”The BTS video was released as the K-pop group celebrated the ninth anniversary of its debut. While chatting and reminiscing over a meal, the members — J-Hope, RM, Jin, Suga, Jimin, V and Jungkook — touched on some of the challenges they were facing as artists, including the pressure to keep churning out hit songs.“I should be writing about what I’m feeling and the stories I want to tell,” Suga said, “but I’m just forcefully squeezing out words because I need to satisfy someone.”RM, who often speaks for the group in English — including at a recent White House visit — said it was challenging for him to balance his own artistic work with the demands of acting as a kind of group spokesman.The singers seemed to agree that some time focusing on their solo careers would strengthen their future collaborations and would ultimately be in the service of their fans. And future solo performances are already on the books: Earlier this month, Lollapalooza, a music festival in Chicago, announced that J-Hope would be a headliner at the event this summer.“I want to keep performing,” RM said, “but I feel like I’ve lost direction.” More