Memes, old tracks, new music: These are the things that will keep their spirits up, say BTS fans in Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru.
K-pop band BTS has a huge fan following in India, especially in the South.
With K-pop group BTS set to take a break for two years as its members undergo military service under Korea’s conscription laws, fans in South India say they will bide their time till it reassembles.
Available to them are various coping mechanisms, primary among which is the new music that BTS members have promised to release before they go on military service.
“I am not that sad because they all are going to share their solo music before going to military duty,” says Nishitha Rachel, a self-confessed “diehard” BTS follower from Hyderabad.
Rachel was referring to a 14 June announcement by the group that members planned to concentrate on solo careers, as well as talks of their enrolling in the South Korean army as mandated under the country’s laws.
The Album The Astronaut by the oldest BTS member Jin is set for release on 28 October.
First off the starting block in their pursuit of solo careers will be the band’s oldest member Jin, who will release his first single, The Astronaut, this Friday, 28 October.
Reports say Jin’s debut album was created in collaboration with British rock band Coldplay, with which BTS had earlier worked for their shared single My Universe.
In a statement on 17 October, the label that manages the band — BigHit Music — said the group would reconvene “around 2025 following their service commitment”.
Individual solo albums from the other six BTS members — Suga, RM, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook — will presumably follow during this time.
“Hopefully, there will be a lot of new music from these members,” Rachel told South First.
Under South Korean law, all able-bodied men aged 18-28 are required to serve in the military for 18 months. The focus fell on BTS in 2020 when Jin turned 28.
BTS album collection of Hyderabad fan Rachel. (Supplied)
Critics wondered if the group members had been given an exemption on account of their celebrity status and of their valuable contribution to Korean culture.
However, instead of total exemption, the group members were only allowed to put off their military service until they turn 30; Jin reaches that age in December.
In its media release, BigHit Music confirmed that that the band’s members were “moving forward with plans to fulfil their military service”, and Jin would be the first.
“Group member Jin will initiate the process as soon as his schedule for his solo release is concluded at the end of October,” it said.
“Other members of the group plan to carry out their military service based on their own individual plans.”
Shocked by the announcement, dismayed BTS fans across the globe — who call themselves the “Army” — have been tweeting emotional messages ever since.
BTS band knick-knacks collected by Hyderabad fan Rachel. (Supplied)
“Thank you, BTS, for being our home, for your beautiful music that enlighten(s) our life, for your love and happiness to us,” said one tweet, capturing the general mood.
“Thank you for everything. We’ll stay in this Magic Shop forever. We’ll support you. We’re always here for you. We’ll wait for you. Army forever. We love you.”
Sadhana Kumar, 19, an engineering student from Coimbatore, explained the general mood among BTS fans.
“BTS songs are therapy for a stressful life and fans will have tough two years without seeing and interacting with the band,” she told South First.
But as Hyderabad’s Rachel said, fans were also working out ways to deal with what BTS itself calls the “hiatus”. “People think us fans are sad, but we are coping,” she said.
One coping mechanism, she explained, was going though memes of the group members and the Korean military that BTS fans the world over have been making of late.
“These are extremely hilarious, they keep us smiling,” Rachel said.
The second mechanism, she confessed, is pretty routine: Going over the group’s vast portfolio, and listening to their old hits.
“They (BTS) have given so much content since 2013, we can go through all of it again and never be bored,” Rachel said.
The third is, of course, the new music that they have been promised.
Sadhana and Rachel are just two faces among the thousands in South India who have been bitten by the BTS bug.
Rahul Gandhi got a taste of this craze when his Bharat Jodo Yatra tour passed through Alappuzha in Kerala on 22 September.
In a bid to connect with the state’s youths, he met a group of girls; they turned out to be the band’s followers, and called themselves the “BTS Army”.
When the Gandhi scion asked the group about their career plans, they said they wanted to become nurses and work in South Korea, according to the India Today magazine.
The answer intrigued the Gandhi scion so much that he asked her why there of all places. The explanation was probably not what he expected.
“We are the BTS Army,” the girls explained. “When we are feeling low, listening to their music is quite comforting.”
Gandhi later shared a video of him interacting with the group, and tweeted, “A delightful chat with these incredible girls who are Kerala’s BTS Army!”
Shri @RahulGandhi ji ‘s chat with these incredible girls who are Kerala’s BTS Army is soo adorable.
??❣️❣️#BharatJodoYatra— @DrKalyani _INC? (@DrKalyani_INC) September 20, 2022
The Kerala girls’ obsession with BTS is not isolated.
Also known as “Hallyu”, K-pop has been sweeping across India for the past decade, and the girls are clearly caught in its wave.
India’s love K-pop began in Manipur in the 2000, when a local separatist outfit, the Revolutionary Peoples Front, banned Bollywood movies in the state, saying these undermined its cultural values.
Forced into eschewing Hindi films and serials, local people turned to Korean entertainment, discovered K-pop, and were hooked.
The rest of the North-east soon caught on to Hallyu, and with PSY’s internet sensational Gangnam Style in 2011, so did all of India.
The South Korean government did its best to promote its country’s culture in India, with its cultural centre in New Delhi conducting a K-pop contest every year successfully since 2013.
In South India, what appealed to the people were, additionally, Korean food habits, clothing and lifestyle, according to Godwin Emmanuel, lecturer, filmmaker, and a BTS fan from Bengaluru.
“Cultural factors such as these play a vital role in influencing South Indians,” Emmanuel, who is researching the impact of K-pop and Korean drama on people from India’s southern states, told South First.
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