BTS Begins Again

In mid-2025, right after the final member of BTS, the biggest band in the world, had served out the mandatory military service required of every able-bodied male in South Korea, the seven members of the group decamped for Los Angeles to reunite under one roof.

The seven—RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook—had been in the band together since the early 2010s, when they were all still teenagers, but had not lived in the same place since 2019. After a few years apart, fulfilling their service and tending to solo careers, it was time to get back to work.

“We’d do six days a week, like businessmen,” says RM, the band’s leader. They followed a strict routine: training together in the gym in the morning, coming back home for lunch, reporting to the studio by 1 p.m., and working with various songwriters and producers on new songs until about 8 p.m., after which they’d all go back home.

Living in one house as roommates once again, BTS were inadvertently doing a simulation of life before superstardom, back to their days as trainees for Big Hit Entertainment (later rebranded as Hybe Corporation) when they would’ve given anything just to debut. This was before they sold over 500 million units and racked up over 104 billion streams worldwide. Before they became the first Korean band to be nominated for a Grammy, to top the Billboard 200 album chart and the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, to speak at the United Nations. Before they became a global cultural force, the best-selling Asian act ever, and one of the best-selling groups—of any genre, any nation, any time—period.

“The personal pressure is huge,” he said on the December 6 livestream. “Since last month, I haven’t even been able to sleep. I was thinking about whether I should get a prescription for sleeping pills…. I’ve wondered thousands of times, Would it be better for the team to disband or go on hiatus?”

–RM

By now, the BTS mythology is well-worn: In 2010, Big Hit Entertainment, then an underdog record label in Seoul, signed a 16-year-old RM, who was already making a name for himself as a prodigious rapper in the local underground hip-hop scene. Suga, a songwriter and rapper who also had a presence in that scene, and J-Hope, a B-boy dancer turned rapper, joined shortly after. Sensing a more lucrative opportunity, the company changed its plans and turned the hip-hop trio into a K-pop band—eventually creating a unique seven-member lineup that bridged the edginess of the underground rappers with the shiny commercial appeal of a more traditional idol group. Jin, an acting major, eventually proved himself a strong vocalist (and earned the tag Worldwide Handsome).

Jung Kook, the youngest and one of its most versatile singers, soon grew into an all-around performer. And then there was V, with his deep baritone and model-esque good looks, adding a cosmopolitan polish to the proceedings. Rounding out the group was Jimin, a trained dancer, who brought his performance skills and a higher-pitched, utterly distinctive voice to the mix. In a few short years, the scrappy underdog act was giving groups from South Korea’s big three entertainment companies—SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment—a run for their money, before becoming the local industry’s number one band and, later, transcending the scene altogether, becoming a worldwide phenomenon.

For those two months in LA, back together in the same house, the boys—now men in their late 20s and early 30s—worked day in and day out, all in an effort to make the best possible album. They worked as if digging for a piece of gold, like they did in the early days. “And I think we kind of found one,” RM says, referring to their fifth studio album and their first in nearly six years, which will of course come with a colossal world tour. It’s the most eagerly anticipated comeback in recent music history, inspiring a kind of feverish excitement reminiscent of when Elvis returned from the Army in 1960.

The band and I are together in a studio about an hour away from Seoul, the first interview they’ve granted as a group since announcing a break in 2022, and I find myself immediately disarmed by their camaraderie—which feels both reassuring and hard-won. In December, RM went live on Weverse, the community platform of Hybe, and confessed to fans that he had thought of disbanding the group “thousands of times” ahead of their comeback. The livestream sent shock waves through ARMY (Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth), the band’s exceedingly global, impressively strategic, and lovingly protective fan base.

The strain is understandable; the stakes are almost too high. Nearly six years on from their last studio album, can BTS—which stands for Bangtan Sonyeondan, or Bulletproof Boy Scouts, before later evolving into Beyond the Scene—deliver a body of work that meets the anticipation from that long wait? Almost four years after last performing together, is the magic still there? Or has their time apart changed them in ways that make it difficult to go back to the way things were? Added to all of that is the fact that, in helping bring South Korea’s music scene to the center of global pop, they also have the hopes of an entire nation on their backs—not to mention the adoration and dreams of their Earth-spanning ARMY.

Sitting down together for this interview and mostly speaking through a translator, the topic of RM’s Weverse live—the crash-out heard round the world—naturally comes up. “I think I have some memes because of that livestream,” RM says, laughing.

How did the other members feel?

“Actually, none of us watched that video of the live-streaming,” V says.

“We would only watch short YouTube Shorts on it or Reels,” says Jin.

“Because it’d be weird if you watch each other’s live-stream,” Suga explains. “We’re always together and we’re like brothers.”

“I think it’s RM’s love language to ARMY in a way,” says Jimin. “It really shows how emotionally invested he is in the group, and in ARMY as well. I think it was very RM to be vulnerable and say things like that.”

“RM is like the identity of this group,” V says. “He’s the core leader of the group, so he must feel so much more pressure than the rest of us do. I usually don’t have that much pressure, but it seems like he does.”

RM, visibly moved by his bandmates’ sentiments, says, “How sweet,” looking at the other six. “Love these guys.”

Their closeness is palpable. They are clearly easily relaxed with one another. Jimin squeezes Jin’s neck; Jin playfully taps Jimin’s leg. Jung Kook settles in, placing two tangerines and several tiny bags of potato crackers in front of himself, munching with enthusiasm between answers. Meanwhile, V—the significance of the occasion not lost on him—whips out his phone to take a photo of the others.

In true BTS fashion, the boys worked through the complex emotions spurred on by RM’s Weverse live by clowning on each other, as brothers are wont to do.

“We’re not the type that consoles each other,” Jimin says. “But we just laugh and make fun of the person to make him laugh and forget about it…. We also had some drinks together.”

“At a certain point, just like you can’t really understand what makes music magical, I think it’s the same with bands,” Martin continued. “And that’s why we love bands sometimes: We don’t really know why. Why is this group of seven people a magical thing, bigger than the sum of its parts? Beyond the fact that they work extraordinarily hard and that they’re kind to each other and they love what they do, there’s a certain magic that I don’t know how to explain.”

Lost in all this talk of their long-awaited comeback is the fact that, over the past few years, the members of BTS encountered something out of reach for most ultra-famous celebrities—they experienced becoming regular people again.

Nearly all male South Korean citizens between 18 and 28 are required to serve for roughly 18 to 21 months in

the military due to the permanent threat of conflict with North Korea. Almost no one gets an exemption (save for Olympic medalists). Before they enlisted, there was some speculation that the members of BTS would be granted one—after all, they were practically national treasures. But they soon surprised the world by enlisting, staggering their service—with Jin going in first and Suga completing it last—so that there would always be BTS members active in the public sphere as solo performers, a highly coordinated effort that ensured their beloved ARMY would never miss their presence.

By fulfilling their military duty, in roles as varied as drill instructors (Jin and J-Hope) to military cook (Jung Kook) to special task force (V), the members were able to experience the tedium and routine of daily life like their fellow 20-something Korean citizens. Suga, for example, served as a public-service worker, reportedly due to a shoulder injury, going from headlining stadiums around the world to clocking in at an office.

“I was actually never, ever late to the office,” Suga says, proudly. “I always came in 10 minutes early. I got ready for whatever I had to do for the day. It was at first weird for me to always get to some place on time, and always go home at the same time, but I got used to it, and later it just became part of me.” (That routine eventually influenced his music making too: “Before I went to the service, I would usually work on music at nighttime or very late at night, but I actually used the daytime to work on songs after I just got discharged.”)

“Being put into a totally different world for us and adapting was, of course, difficult,” J-Hope admits. “But humans are funny because they learn to adapt pretty quickly. I do feel that I have become healthier, and I got to learn more about life and different sides of society. I also got to know a lot of new people, which was a big plus. And being in the military and serving in the military is something that every man in Korea goes through.” “It was so, so hard, I was going to cry,” Jimin says, pantomiming tears while cracking up. “It was very challenging. But being able to be in those shoes and experiencing that meant a lot to us.” One of the group’s most memorable reunions was actually during the break. “It was before we all got discharged from the military service. And Jung Kook cried, he bawled,” V says, recounting his bandmate’s desire for the group to reunite in earnest. “Jung Kook cried because he really wanted to be onstage, and he just really wanted to perform.”

Photographs by Dukhwa Jang
Styled by Mobolaji Dawodu
Hair by Naejoo Park, Hansom and Hwayeon Kim
Makeup by Dareum Kim and Shinae Lee
Set design by Minkyu Jeon
Lighting Direction by Hyunjung Go
Produced by Nuhana