The Koreas | Society | East Asia

BTS Returned to Gwanghwamun. Not Everyone in South Korea Was Celebrating.

The Korean government treated a BTS comeback concert as a national event. The response at home was more complicated than expected.

The members of BTS in Dec. 2021, before their hiatus and recent comeback.

On March 21‚ the South Korean government activated its first-ever “disaster caution alert” for an event venue․ The National Fire Agency issued a national mobilization order‚ dispatching 50 ambulances from across the country․ 6,500 police officers and 3,400 city personnel were deployed in downtown Seoul‚ while anti-drone vehicles were deployed to Gyeongbokgung Palace․ Subway stations – including Gwanghwamun, City Hall, and Gyeongbokgung Station – suspended service entirely. Museums‚ galleries, and other cultural facilities in the Jongno district adjusted their opening schedules, and the rooftops of nearby buildings were sealed up. Organized marches in the area were blocked for almost a week‚ including a planned march by labor groups․ 

The occasion was not a state visit or a national emergency. It was a one-hour K-pop concert.

BTS – the seven-member group widely regarded as one of the most commercially significant acts in the history of the Korean Wave, or hallyu, shorthand for South Korea’s globally ascendant cultural export industry – returned to the stage in Gwanghwamun Square after a nearly four-year hiatus due to the members’ mandatory military service. The event was livestreamed exclusively on Netflix and accompanied by the release of their fifth studio album, “ARIRANG,” which sold nearly 4 million copies on its first day.

Whatever mix of post-Itaewon tragedy caution and national branding drove the mobilization ahead of the BTS concert, senior officials were explicit about framing it in strategic terms. But in doing so, they may have illustrated a core vulnerability in the very soft power model they were trying to showcase.

At a Cabinet meeting ahead of the concert, President Lee Jae-myung called it “an important opportunity to demonstrate the excellence of K-culture and the high standing of South Korea to the world.” In January, Prime Minister Kim Min-suk visited Hybe, the K-pop agency behind the super-group, for a town hall meeting. Kim told them that holding the comeback at Gwanghwamun, the square where citizens had protested the December 2024 martial law crisis with K-pop light sticks in hand, carried profound national meaning. “The roots of the Korean Wave lie in liberal democracy,” he remarked.

The rhetoric fit a familiar pattern․ Over the past decade or so‚ successive South Korean administrations have increasingly treated hallyu not merely as an economic sector‚ but as something closer to a pillar of national strategy‚ a form of soft power that can justify the substantial public investment and the marshaling of state resources that it requires․ Korean media had widely reported that BTS’s return would provide more than 1․2 trillion won (around $810 million) of economic benefit and thousands of new jobs․ One investment bank estimated total comeback revenues at 2.9 trillion won, roughly $1.9 billion. Analysts projected the accompanying world tour could rival Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in total revenue.

And by several measures, the economic returns materialized. Convenience stores near Gwanghwamun reported sales increases of more than three times their usual volume. Department stores saw foreign customer spending rise, and foreign tourist bookings for the week of the concert doubled compared to the prior week. The “BTSnomics,” it turned out, was not wrong. But the backlash was not about the economic numbers.

The South Korean public was not so easily convinced of the benefits – especially when weighed against the costs. 

Gwanghwamun is not a concert venue. It is the administrative heart of Seoul – home to major government ministries, corporate headquarters, and some of the city’s busiest transit corridors. Shutting it down for a week meant that some office workers in the area were pressured to take annual leave, with some companies reportedly ordering compulsory half-days on the Friday before the concert.

Access to 31 nearby buildings was restricted; parcel and e-commerce deliveries across Jongno and Jung-gu were delayed or suspended; pharmaceutical deliveries to nearby pharmacies were postponed; and subway stations began skipping stops hours before the concert started. One bride-to-be, who had booked her wedding at a venue near Gwanghwamun months in advance, told the Kyunghyang Shinmun that she was considering a lawsuit.

A widely shared comment on a Korean online community jokingly compared the lockdown to the December 2024 declaration of martial law, which, the commenter noted, had lasted only a few hours.

Hybe reportedly paid roughly 30 million won, under $21,000, to rent Gwanghwamun Square for seven days, with combined fees for Gyeongbokgung and Sungnyemun access totaling around 90 million won. Yet the company bore none of the costs of mobilizing 10,000-plus police personnel for security duty. South Korea currently has no legal mechanism to charge private event organizers for additional police services. Critics pointed out that the concert, though nominally free, was, in practice, a commercial launch event: the Netflix-exclusive broadcast and global album rollout are generating vast revenue for Hybe, with what amounted, in their view, to a public subsidy in the form of state resources and civic disruption. 

State officials appeared well aware of these concerns. Hours before the concert‚ Kim, South Korea’s prime minister, visited the command center on site and expressed concern. His tone was notably more cautious than his January visit to the Hybe building․ “This has become a national event‚ but fundamentally‚ the state and community are supporting an event organized by BTS and Hybe‚” he stated‚ urging the company to “recognize that the entire nation and its citizens are showing interest and support while enduring certain inconveniences․”

Authorities and organizers had anticipated a turnout of 260‚000 people in the Gwanghwamun area for the concert․ An unofficial police count put attendance at 42,000‚ while according to Hybe‚ 104,000 people attended‚ based on telecommunications data․ Even the higher figure fell well short of projections, and the security apparatus, scaled for a quarter-million, appeared disproportionate to the crowd it was managing.

None of this diminishes BTS’s commercial power or global cultural significance. The new album ARIRANG is a blockbuster, and the upcoming world tour will likely be historic in scale. But for those watching the backlash unfold domestically‚ the Gwanghwamun concert raised questions‚ beyond BTS‚ about the South Korean state’s relationship to its own soft power narrative․

This is not the first time the state has hitched itself to hallyu. In 2022, BTS held a concert for free to support Busan’s (ultimately unsuccessful) 2030 World Expo bid‚ drawing an estimated 50,000 attendees․ The concert was not controversial in its own right‚ but the overall cost and logistical details raised questions․

When K-pop acts like Red Velvet were sent to Pyongyang in 2018 as part of inter-Korean diplomacy, few questioned the state’s role in orchestrating the moment. Something like an implicit bargain has shaped how South Korea relates to its own cultural industries. The pattern has been, roughly, that when the state hitches itself to hallyu, the public tends to go along, so long as the costs feel proportional and the purpose legible. 

The Gwanghwamun shutdown suggested that this tolerance may have limits. The South Korean government justified the disruptions via its long-standing logic of economic ripple effects‚ national branding, and cultural prestige. But this time‚ for a visible portion of the public‚ it was not enough․

When Kim remarked, back in January, that “the roots of the Korean Wave lie in liberal democracy,” his statement linked a boy band’s album launch to the narrative of South Korea’s democratic identity. Yet as some analysts have pointed out‚ cultural appeal is far from a genuine national strategy. A widely discussed insight from Joseph Nye’s soft power framework is that cultural influence tends to be most effective when it does not appear state-directed; when it feels organic rather than orchestrated. A prime minister visiting an entertainment company’s headquarters and publicly claiming its product as a fruit of the national political system might leave room for interpretation as, whatever its intent, a conspicuous display of the state’s hand. The more explicitly Seoul treats hallyu as an instrument of statecraft, the closer the model risks drifting toward top-down cultural diplomacy, and the more difficult it becomes to maintain the perception of cultural spontaneity that soft power depends on.

South Korean policymakers would do well to pay attention․ The instinct to wrap every major hallyu event in the language of national strategy, to treat a corporate album launch as an occasion for presidential remarks and counterterrorism deployments, may, over time, risk corroding the very domestic goodwill that soft power ultimately depends on. 

One concert’s backlash doesn’t make a trend. But it does raise a trillion-won question. At what point does the state’s insistence on claiming credit for South Korea’s cultural influence begin to cost more than it earns?

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On March 21‚ the South Korean government activated its first-ever “disaster caution alert” for an event venue․ The National Fire Agency issued a national mobilization order‚ dispatching 50 ambulances from across the country․ 6,500 police officers and 3,400 city personnel were deployed in downtown Seoul‚ while anti-drone vehicles were deployed to Gyeongbokgung Palace․ Subway stations – including Gwanghwamun, City Hall, and Gyeongbokgung Station – suspended service entirely. Museums‚ galleries, and other cultural facilities in the Jongno district adjusted their opening schedules, and the rooftops of nearby buildings were sealed up. Organized marches in the area were blocked for almost a week‚ including a planned march by labor groups․ 

The occasion was not a state visit or a national emergency. It was a one-hour K-pop concert.

BTS – the seven-member group widely regarded as one of the most commercially significant acts in the history of the Korean Wave, or hallyu, shorthand for South Korea’s globally ascendant cultural export industry – returned to the stage in Gwanghwamun Square after a nearly four-year hiatus due to the members’ mandatory military service. The event was livestreamed exclusively on Netflix and accompanied by the release of their fifth studio album, “ARIRANG,” which sold nearly 4 million copies on its first day.

Whatever mix of post-Itaewon tragedy caution and national branding drove the mobilization ahead of the BTS concert, senior officials were explicit about framing it in strategic terms. But in doing so, they may have illustrated a core vulnerability in the very soft power model they were trying to showcase.

At a Cabinet meeting ahead of the concert, President Lee Jae-myung called it “an important opportunity to demonstrate the excellence of K-culture and the high standing of South Korea to the world.” In January, Prime Minister Kim Min-suk visited Hybe, the K-pop agency behind the super-group, for a town hall meeting. Kim told them that holding the comeback at Gwanghwamun, the square where citizens had protested the December 2024 martial law crisis with K-pop light sticks in hand, carried profound national meaning. “The roots of the Korean Wave lie in liberal democracy,” he remarked.

The rhetoric fit a familiar pattern․ Over the past decade or so‚ successive South Korean administrations have increasingly treated hallyu not merely as an economic sector‚ but as something closer to a pillar of national strategy‚ a form of soft power that can justify the substantial public investment and the marshaling of state resources that it requires․ Korean media had widely reported that BTS’s return would provide more than 1․2 trillion won (around $810 million) of economic benefit and thousands of new jobs․ One investment bank estimated total comeback revenues at 2.9 trillion won, roughly $1.9 billion. Analysts projected the accompanying world tour could rival Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in total revenue.

And by several measures, the economic returns materialized. Convenience stores near Gwanghwamun reported sales increases of more than three times their usual volume. Department stores saw foreign customer spending rise, and foreign tourist bookings for the week of the concert doubled compared to the prior week. The “BTSnomics,” it turned out, was not wrong. But the backlash was not about the economic numbers.

The South Korean public was not so easily convinced of the benefits – especially when weighed against the costs. 

Gwanghwamun is not a concert venue. It is the administrative heart of Seoul – home to major government ministries, corporate headquarters, and some of the city’s busiest transit corridors. Shutting it down for a week meant that some office workers in the area were pressured to take annual leave, with some companies reportedly ordering compulsory half-days on the Friday before the concert.

Access to 31 nearby buildings was restricted; parcel and e-commerce deliveries across Jongno and Jung-gu were delayed or suspended; pharmaceutical deliveries to nearby pharmacies were postponed; and subway stations began skipping stops hours before the concert started. One bride-to-be, who had booked her wedding at a venue near Gwanghwamun months in advance, told the Kyunghyang Shinmun that she was considering a lawsuit.

A widely shared comment on a Korean online community jokingly compared the lockdown to the December 2024 declaration of martial law, which, the commenter noted, had lasted only a few hours.

Hybe reportedly paid roughly 30 million won, under $21,000, to rent Gwanghwamun Square for seven days, with combined fees for Gyeongbokgung and Sungnyemun access totaling around 90 million won. Yet the company bore none of the costs of mobilizing 10,000-plus police personnel for security duty. South Korea currently has no legal mechanism to charge private event organizers for additional police services. Critics pointed out that the concert, though nominally free, was, in practice, a commercial launch event: the Netflix-exclusive broadcast and global album rollout are generating vast revenue for Hybe, with what amounted, in their view, to a public subsidy in the form of state resources and civic disruption. 

State officials appeared well aware of these concerns. Hours before the concert‚ Kim, South Korea’s prime minister, visited the command center on site and expressed concern. His tone was notably more cautious than his January visit to the Hybe building․ “This has become a national event‚ but fundamentally‚ the state and community are supporting an event organized by BTS and Hybe‚” he stated‚ urging the company to “recognize that the entire nation and its citizens are showing interest and support while enduring certain inconveniences․”

Authorities and organizers had anticipated a turnout of 260‚000 people in the Gwanghwamun area for the concert․ An unofficial police count put attendance at 42,000‚ while according to Hybe‚ 104,000 people attended‚ based on telecommunications data․ Even the higher figure fell well short of projections, and the security apparatus, scaled for a quarter-million, appeared disproportionate to the crowd it was managing.

None of this diminishes BTS’s commercial power or global cultural significance. The new album ARIRANG is a blockbuster, and the upcoming world tour will likely be historic in scale. But for those watching the backlash unfold domestically‚ the Gwanghwamun concert raised questions‚ beyond BTS‚ about the South Korean state’s relationship to its own soft power narrative․

This is not the first time the state has hitched itself to hallyu. In 2022, BTS held a concert for free to support Busan’s (ultimately unsuccessful) 2030 World Expo bid‚ drawing an estimated 50,000 attendees․ The concert was not controversial in its own right‚ but the overall cost and logistical details raised questions․

When K-pop acts like Red Velvet were sent to Pyongyang in 2018 as part of inter-Korean diplomacy, few questioned the state’s role in orchestrating the moment. Something like an implicit bargain has shaped how South Korea relates to its own cultural industries. The pattern has been, roughly, that when the state hitches itself to hallyu, the public tends to go along, so long as the costs feel proportional and the purpose legible. 

The Gwanghwamun shutdown suggested that this tolerance may have limits. The South Korean government justified the disruptions via its long-standing logic of economic ripple effects‚ national branding, and cultural prestige. But this time‚ for a visible portion of the public‚ it was not enough․

When Kim remarked, back in January, that “the roots of the Korean Wave lie in liberal democracy,” his statement linked a boy band’s album launch to the narrative of South Korea’s democratic identity. Yet as some analysts have pointed out‚ cultural appeal is far from a genuine national strategy. A widely discussed insight from Joseph Nye’s soft power framework is that cultural influence tends to be most effective when it does not appear state-directed; when it feels organic rather than orchestrated. A prime minister visiting an entertainment company’s headquarters and publicly claiming its product as a fruit of the national political system might leave room for interpretation as, whatever its intent, a conspicuous display of the state’s hand. The more explicitly Seoul treats hallyu as an instrument of statecraft, the closer the model risks drifting toward top-down cultural diplomacy, and the more difficult it becomes to maintain the perception of cultural spontaneity that soft power depends on.

South Korean policymakers would do well to pay attention․ The instinct to wrap every major hallyu event in the language of national strategy, to treat a corporate album launch as an occasion for presidential remarks and counterterrorism deployments, may, over time, risk corroding the very domestic goodwill that soft power ultimately depends on. 

One concert’s backlash doesn’t make a trend. But it does raise a trillion-won question. At what point does the state’s insistence on claiming credit for South Korea’s cultural influence begin to cost more than it earns?

Seungmin Ryu studies economics and international studies at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea. She has assisted research at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the East Asia Institute, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and has previously published in The East Asia Forum and the Yale Review of International Studies.

South Korea soft power

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