(TRANS) BTS, “Seven color rainbow success legend DNA is made of BS & T..”

Seven color rainbow success legend DNA is made of Blood, Sweat & Tears..global fans are busy putting their own translated caption on Youtube videos.

‘so cute oppa(너무 귀여워요 오빠)’. 

‘SARANGHAEYO(사랑해요)’. 

‘Namjoon♥(남준)’. 

These are some of the comments that were left on BTS video on V Live App, the Internet broadcast. This was during RM’s new year greeting video that lasted 32minutes and 20 sec.

“ I thought maybe you guys might be wondering what we’ve been up to...it’s finally 2018. It’s the year of the Dog. I was born in the year of Dog too but when I am overseas, since my birthday hasn’t passed yet, I am stilll 23 but in here (Korea) I’m 25, so yes, I just accept it.” RM was talking as if he was casually talking to his friends. 

In this video, there were about 121,689,789 Hearts during 17 hours, which comes to about 2000 per second. There have been 11 different languages captions done including French, Russian, Portugal, Vietnamese, Arabic, etc.

This is the current picture of BTS, who is known as the Social King. BTS has received Top Social Artist award at 2017 Billboard Music Award last May, surpassing Justin Bieber and was also voted as one of the 25 most influential figures on internet. This is their big accomplishment after five years in the businesss since they were formed in June, 2013.

During our last interview we did with Bang, Sihyuk, a CEO of Big Hit Entertainment in April, he stated, “Our goal is to show as much content as possible of BTS. If you have certain thoughts or struggles, and know the way to solve them, you will be able to relate to BTS music better. “ He then added, “This is all due to member’s voluntary and consistent effort. “ We can narrow down their social media communication principle considering Bang PD’s words. Let’s summarize them to seven different principle.

1. Relatable: RM (from Il-san) Jin (Kwa-Chun) Suga (Daegu) J-hope (Kwang Joo) Jimin (Busan) V (Daegu or Geochang) and Jungkook (Busan) who were born in the 90’s have all come from country region and spent their turbulent and insecure teenage years as trainee. Some members used a word “Han” to describe their experience. They have transferred these feelings(emotions) into their music. RM said,”Our story, present story, it’s a slogan that we will talk about story of teens and people in 20’s.” Bang Sihyuk said, “It’s Universal generation.” This all penetrates deeply into their lyrics. 

“3rd generation/5th generation/Ok since I like yook-po then 6th gen/Media and adults tell us that we have no will/they condemn us as some sort of stocks/they kill us even before we try” (lyrics from Dope)

“Why you call me spoon spoon, I am a human being/so what/live however you want it’s ultimately yours to live/don’t try, it’s okay to lose” (lyrics from Fire) 

② Being truthful: They are bold and honest when it comes to telling their story. Suga talked about his struggles during debut period in Agust D, his mixtape.

“Even if I excel in my music, I become an owner of a music shop in Daegu/People thinking that I would only become an owner of music shop drives me nuts/I practice at night and work part time in early morning/I go to school with my tired body then I sleep/I have now become 20 yrs old. The view of the graduation sucks (lyrics from 72418)

RM who’s in charge of all English interviews have once confessed that “I am scared and nervous” in V live, before leaving for their first U.S talk show appearance in November. 

Author Kim, Sung Chul said, “BTS is not just the idol inside the TV. Fans feel them as friends who are connected thru social media.Their growth and success feels like the ones of their own friend, brother, cousin,etc. They laugh and cry together as they go through many things together.”

③ Hard working: Lee, Kyu-hyuk, the mass music critic said, “BTS casually shows their daily lives. The amount they show and content of it all satisfying to fans.” In reality, they show their broadcast, concert videos as well as their MV. They show their own and cover songs, and their daily lives. (Bangtan Bomb) Even when they don’t have official activities, they produce their own content and provide to their fans. “Hye-ja” (meme word that explains when someone is being generous) Sonyeondan is their nickname in Korea because of their generosity to their fans. 

Furthermore, they are consistent. Last November, after they performed at AMAs, they came back to the hotel and did a Vlive broadcast for their fans instead of going to other social gatherings. At first, it started with 300 people. They said in Vlive, “We have never been this nervous after our debut stage. Because of all you ARMYs, we were able to gain our confidence and get through this.” in the end, more than 2M viewers watched their live broadcast.

④ Digital Citizens: All seven members are digital citizens who are comfortable in their digital environment. They work on V Live apps by themselves. Jungkook who went on a trip with Jimin to Japan last October created, produced and edited his own 3 min 40 sec video and revealed it to fans. 

⑤ Individual charm: During all process, all seven members’ charm clearly shows through music or as person. They engage and become involved in lyric making, music composing and album producing process so their image is considered more of “artist.” In reality, V enjoys taking pictures with his camera, and Jungkook introduces many different musicians’ music through twitter. Jin also does his own show called EAT Jin!. Each character for each members has been developed.  

⑥ Many layers of story telling: It’s a success story of BTS being a soil spoon idol from a small company combined with growth of young boys.  Their official second album “WINGS” inspired by the novel Demian is a good example of that. Kim, Sook-kyung, the professor at UCLA Theater Communication Dept. said, “Their contents have a classic side that crosses world’s classic literature and movie. Some of the contents are connected from the past or predict the future. In a way, it’s sort of like “fishing”  Last May when Jin tweeted the picture when he was holding the flower called Smeraldo, fans discovered that in many ways, that implied the comeback of BTS. The magazine,”Roling Stones” analyzed that BTS has constructed mythologies before comeback with a new album. 

⑦ Donation: One of BTS’s intention was to “influence society in warm and genuine way”. Society changing “Love Myself” campaign is the example. In November last year, BTS and Big Hit Entertainement together donated U.S $ 500,000 to start the Love Myself fund and decided to give 3% of their “Love yourself” album’’ series sales proceed. Their donation goes to #ENDViolence campaign of UNICEF that supports the world without violence for children and teens.

During all this, there are their passionate fans known as ARMY. As Bang, Sihyuk said BTS’s activity/promotion is very much active overseas, and BTS has sort of “imported back to Korea”. The Korean contents of BTS is subbed by many diffferent languages by their fans. Stephanie Choi, who’s pursuing her doctoral degree at University of California, Santa Barbara said, “People tend to think that fandom develops per country and region but fans in our generation thesedays meet through on-line and we build up community per language.” There are a lot of contents made by fans too. Professor Kim, Sook-Kyung said, “Psy became famous because many celebrities talked about him, but BTS is famous because their fans used sort of “bottom-up” method where they consistently created and developed BTS related contents. There is difference between Korean fans and International fans in K-pop fandom but in case of BTS, this difference is narrowing down.”

- TRANSLATION CREDIT @AudreyPark

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