The last time BTS released an album, its promotional campaign started with a conquest of the American media landscape and shifted to South Korea a few days later.
Six years later, promotion for the K-pop megagroup’s latest album, “Arirang,” is running in reverse.
Instead of starting in New York with an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show and a performance in Grand Central Terminal for the “Tonight Show,” as BTS did in 2020, the band is starting with a free comeback concert on Saturday in the historic center of Seoul that’s being livestreamed on Netflix.
They will perform on the “Tonight Show” again, too, but not until next week.
The new album takes its name from a popular Korean folk song, and the show’s setting — an outdoor stage near an ancient palace — celebrates the band’s Korean identity.
Queenie Li, an associate professor of strategic communication at the University of Miami, said the focus on Korean landmarks in the Netflix trailer suggests that BTS is focused “less about going outward and more about coming back to who they are.”
The album is also the group’s first since all seven members completed their mandatory military service, a rite of passage for South Korean men that is often seen as a marker of patriotism and responsibility.
“‘Arirang’ ends up feeling like more than just a comeback,” Professor Li said. “It feels like a return that’s tied to identity, responsibility, and a deeper connection to their country.”
The album release has also marked a return to BTS’s signature style of layered storytelling — and expanded its impact. For over a decade, fans have followed an expansive fictional “BTS Universe” across music videos, webtoons and novels. Now, BTS has teamed up with Google, Apple, Meta and other major platforms to keep fans intrigued.
Before the “Arirang” release, BTS embedded references to the project through creative teasers.
The group launched a Spotify scavenger hunt where fans followed digital clues to members’ voice messages, for example. And it had roses distributed in Seoul, London, and Los Angeles that included cards with QR codes that guided fans deeper into the campaign. Google hosted weeks of trivia “quests” leading up to the album release.
Kim Jae-heun, a reporter in Seoul who covers K-pop for The Korea Herald Newspaper, said he saw the “Arirang” promotional campaign as one designed to target a global audience while reinforcing the band’s artistic identity.
“BTS’s earlier strategy centered on establishing dominance in the U.S. during its rise,” he said, “whereas the current approach appears more measured, expansive and strategically refined.”
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