BTS may be taking a break, but the craze for the boy band is still going strong

SEOUL — The news hit like a bombshell. The South Korean boy band BTS recently announced that it would be taking a break so that each of its seven members could focus on their solo careers. However, projects relating to the K-pop supergroup have been multiplying in recent weeks.

Nine years after their debut as a group, RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook have decided to temporarily suspend their collective activities so that each member can find their own voice.

“The problem with the whole K-pop idol system [governed by labels] is that it doesn’t give you the time to mature. You have to keep producing music, keep doing something,” explained boy band’s leader RM in a YouTube video posted June 14.

His bandmate Suga reassured their millions of devoted fans, commonly referred to as the “ARMY,” that this doesn’t mean that BTS is over.

“It’s not that we’re ending the band,” he said. “We’re just living separately for a while.”

However, the temporary separation has caused a panic in the world of K-pop. The stock of Hybe, the boy band’s powerful label, even fell by 27 per cent on the Seoul stock exchange following the news.

However, some companies, such as Disney, are working on keeping the BTS craze alive.

July 12, the American group announced that it had sealed a deal with Hybe. Together they will produce three shows featuring BTS or members of the boy band.

One of them, “BTS: Permission to Dance on Stage – LA,” will allow fans of the band to relive a concert staged in Los Angeles in November 2021, while “BTS Monuments: Beyond the Star” will look back at the history of the septet. “In the Soup: Friendcation” will follow V’s adventures during a surprise trip with other South Korean stars.

For Disney +, these BTS shows are a great opportunity to attract and retain new subscribers in Asia and around the world. For its part, Google hopes to encourage internet users to use its new feature, Street Galleries, by partnering with the seven kings of K-pop. It asked them to share some of their favourite artworks with their fans. Each of them created their own “Street Gallery” in cities that are special to them, including Seoul, Los Angeles and São Paulo.

Suga’s gallery, for example, features virtual reproductions of Frederic Remington’s “Bronco Buster,” William Henry Hunt’s “A Boy Writing” or Wenceslaus Hollar’s “Concert of cherubs on Earth,” the latter being a nod to BTS.

“Seven band members, just like BTS,” he wrote in his Street Gallery. “And what better description of my band than a ‘Concert of cherubs on Earth’?”

RM’s virtual gallery — who describes himself in an interview with Artnews as “an art enthusiast and a collector who loves art” — is located in Seoul, like Jungkook’s.

It contains digitised versions of Joseph Mallord William Turner’s The Lake of Zug, Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley, and several South Korean works of art.

These commercial partnerships show how BTS’s business now extends well beyond music alone.

The boy band has become a cash machine for South Korea since its creation in 2013. It is claimed to be worth more than $3.6 billion to the country’s economy, as estimated by the Hyundai Research Institute in 2018.

Exports associated with BTS, from apparel and cosmetics to high-tech products, also appear to be worth their weight in gold.

So, break or no break, BTS seems to be riding as high as ever.