The ambassadors of Seul

Publish date 26-12-2024

by Mauro Tabasso

They are seven young men, between 25 and 30 years old, with beautiful, clean faces and polite manners. They call themselves Bangtan Sonyeondan, "Bulletproof Boys", but most know them as BTS, the most famous K-pop group in the world, a genre that blends Western pop, rock, jazz, gospel, Japanese music and much more . BTS alone account for 0.3% of South Korea's annual GDP.

Their fans are called army, an army of 90 million people, now deployed in every corner of the planet, since we are talking about the most awarded band ever at the MTV Awards, with sales volumes comparable to those of the Beatles, i.e. 44, 9 million records sold as of September 2023. They don't play instruments, nor do they have a frontman; all seven dance but only some, the "idols", sing. And their songs tackle challenging issues, such as competitiveness among students and the mental health of young generations. K-pop is a real cultural industry, aimed at projecting the image of the Korean nation all over the world, like Hollywood for the United States or like neorealist cinema for Italy, which, as underlined by the writer Michela Murgia , in the post-war period it was able to create the image of a country that was a victim rather than a cradle of fascism.

In 2017 BTS became UNICEF ambassadors for a campaign against violence among young people. After the death of George Floyd in 2020, they donated one million dollars to the "Black Lives Matter" cause and the same amount was doubled in a few days by the army, who mobilized on social networks. This soft power is fully recognized by the BTS by the Seoul government, which first promulgated a "Save BTS" law to postpone the compulsory military service for the group's members and then provided them with seven diplomatic passports, sending them to the UN in 2021 to talk about climate change. BTS held a speech on young people and the environment, talking about collective responsibility and defining young people as the welcome generation, capable of welcoming change rather than fearing it.  Then they sang and danced to the song Permission to dance, with a choreography that invaded the avenues of Manhattan coming out of the Glass Palace. In May 2022, BTS flew to the White House to talk to Joe Biden about the inclusion of Asian minorities in the United States, which was called into question by Trump's policies. And, according to sociological studies, the existence of BTS during the pandemic has greatly reduced discriminatory biases towards Asian people.

Of course we can label them as a simple pop phenomenon, dismiss them with a shrug of the shoulders first listen, but the fact remains that knowing these phenomena means understanding the present, even in its apparently more superficial declinations, which however contain the essence of today's world. In the words of Bob Dylan: «being young means keeping the porthole of hope open, even when the sea is bad and the sky is tired of being blue». And BTS' songs, with their messages against hatred and discrimination, are a wind that blows to sweep away the darkest clouds from tomorrow's horizon.




NP october 2024
Mauro Tabasso with Valentina Giaresti

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