BTS’s history with Kingsman concepts since 2015.

BTS has once again ended up on the receiving end of shameful, racist commentary from an ignorant Western media personality.

Two recent articles in mainstream media have severely missed the mark — but this will come as no surprise to most BTS fans.

Thanks to the unprecedented nature of the ‘BTS phenomenon’, they have become the subject of academic research, beyond popular culture. Following academic events that researched BTS last year in Korea, recently the first large-scale international BTS conference in London was held, drawing attention.  

Both the MMA and MAMA wins are a satisfying way to close out the year, for both BTS and ARMY. BTS’s year isn’t over yet, but we all have a lot to look back on and reflect upon as we move into the new year and the upcoming album.

ARMYs harnessed their negative feelings and channeled that power into an effort that brings BTS the glory, awards or not. This is demonstrative of what a large fandom can do to make its voices heard, and is a much better strategy than raging on Twitter. So if you’re irritated at last night’s outcome, consider lifting BTS up instead of tearing others down, and #BuyPersonaOniTunes.

I’m conducting a fan survey to help provide additional context to my research project. My project wil be presented at the BTS Global Interdisciplinary Conference in London this coming January.

It’s true! There will soon be an entire conference dedicated to BTS.

There’s not much that can be done to change how Western media covers K-Pop—it’s going to take time, and probably a lot of it. The best I can do is continue to write and hope that my words and words of others in the fandom will slowly chip away at the preconceived narrative in place.

On June 19, BTS’s fandom found itself amidst controversy on Twitter. Those who are active in the fandom know this is nothing new; we’re used to watching fights with other fandoms, news outlets, and even internal fanwars. While a lot of the fighting and arguing that takes place online isn’t important — and is only carried out by a small fraction of the fandom — yesterday’s battle was a different beast.

Several days ago, the news broke that BTS’s appearance on a Japanese music show had been canceled, just hours before the group was set to fly from Korea to Japan. Security and media had already gathered at Korea’s Gimpo airport, preparing for BTS’s departure, but the decision to cancel the TV appearance came before the group could depart.