The restaurant was awash in references to the K-pop kings BTS. There were ready-to-go salads called “Army bomb,” giant purple ribbons on the walls and one section covered in purple tassels.
It was expecting a surge in customers on Saturday — situated just a few blocks away from the venue of BTS’s comeback concert. City officials were expecting more than a quarter of a million fans to congregate in central Seoul.
“It was false hope,” said Lee Hanna, the owner of the restaurant, “Green and Grain.” “It was a disaster.”
She had beefed up staffing on Saturday, a day her spot is typically closed, and spent more than 5 million won, about $3,300, on ingredients. But the only foot traffic she got was three Japanese fans, who spent the equivalent of $20. Ms. Lee said she ended up tossing most of the extra produce she had bought.
About 104,000 people were in the vicinity of Gwanghwamun Square, the venue of the performance, on Saturday night, according to Hybe, the company that manages BTS. It cited data from phone companies and ticket sales. But halfway through the hourlong concert, crowd-tracking data from the Seoul government showed only about 60,000 people in the area. (Only 22,000 tickets were distributed for the show.)
The low turnout was not just a hit for business owners like Ms. Lee. On Monday, Hybe shares fell 16 percent in Seoul and closed at the lowest level in months, in a sign that investors were also unnerved.
But to many fans, the concert, which was live-streamed on Netflix, was a triumphant return of BTS after the members’ mandatory military service. The group’s new album, “Arirang,” which was released on Friday, has already sold millions of physical copies and the band is about to embark on a worldwide tour of 82 concerts.
Gwanghwamun Sake is a restaurant in an alley near where the concert stage was set up. The owner, Yang Changhoon, said he was excited to welcome overseas fans with South Korean hospitality. “It’s in our culture to make sure guests don’t go hungry,” he said.
He had prepared around 2,500 rolls of kimbap, a South Korean staple of rice, vegetables and meat or fish wrapped in dried seaweed.
“I used seven vegetables in my rolls to represent the seven members of the band,” he said.
But two days before the concert, city officials began setting up barricades for crowd control that hindered access to Mr. Yang’s store, he said. He only sold a third of his rolls on Saturday and said his loss also amounted to around $3,300. “There were too many restrictions on the day,” he said. “I was disappointed.”
Seoul officials said close to 15,000 safety personnel — 6,500 police officers and the rest provided by Hybe — were assigned to the event. The central government raised its terrorism advisory level to “caution,” the second-lowest tier and the authorities used an A.I. system that analyzed live CCTV images for crowd control. Roads and subway stations in the area had been closed, and there were also many restrictions on pedestrians.
The unusually extensive security measures were a sign of officials’ anxieties about a crowd surge. In October 2022, more than 150 people died in the Itaewon district of Seoul after getting trapped in a narrow alleyway.
There were no accidents reported during the BTS concert, the Seoul government said in a statement on Monday. But many residents and commentators questioned why the concert — a private enterprise — had been held in a public square and relied on official resources.
“We offer both our deepest apologies and my heartfelt gratitude to the citizens, local merchants, office workers, and visitors in the Gwanghwamun area,” Hybe said in a statement on Monday. The safety measures “were unavoidable,” it said.
Ben Chun owns The Pizza Peel, a restaurant about a 10 minute walk from Gwanghwamun Square. He had created a pizza with a purple base, with a side of purple aioli, a nod to the BTS fandom’s signature color.
But he said he only sold five of those pizzas on the day of the concert and overall sales were about 20 percent lower than on a typical Saturday. Most of those customers, he added, were not in the area for the concert.
“Foot traffic in the area was down on Saturday,” Mr. Chun said. “People who live around here knew to avoid to area” because of the projected concert crowd and traffic restrictions, he added.
Still, Mr. Chun, who recalled the Itaewon disaster, said he understood why the authorities were on high alert.
“I think they did the right thing to be on the safe side,” he said. “Lowering the safety measures to increase sales for us — that’s definitely not something we’d take as a trade-off.”
Max Kim, Nailah Morgan and Jiawei Wang contributed reporting.
Jin Yu Young is a reporter and researcher for The Times, based in Seoul, covering South Korea and international breaking news.
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