The Zubillaga family had come from Veracruz, Mexico. Julio and Miryam had brought their daughters, Renata, 15, and Fernanda, 11, as a gift, across 15 hours of flights to a city none of them had visited before. They had tried for world tour tickets to see BTS in Mexico but they had been snapped up already, so they came to Seoul instead, joining the tens of thousands outside the gates, waiting for t...
The Zubillaga family had come from Veracruz, Mexico. Julio and Miryam had brought their daughters, Renata, 15, and Fernanda, 11, as a gift, across 15 hours of flights to a city none of them had visited before. They had tried for world tour tickets to see BTS in Mexico but they had been snapped up already, so they came to Seoul instead, joining the tens of thousands outside the gates, waiting for the music to reach them. “It’s beautiful,” Renata says of the new album, Arirang. Her favourite member, like her mother and father, is Jung Kook. View image in fullscreen The Zubillaga family, (L-R) Julio (44), Renata (15), Miryam (43) and Fernanda (11), flew to South Korea from Mexico as a birthday gift for Renata. The crowds had been flowing in to South Korea’s capital since morning, with fans coming from all over the world; Malaysia to China, France to Bolivia. Nani Cruz, 30, had come from Guam. “Seeing them come back is a huge thing,” she says. “The longing that ARMY is feeling, that’s what we’re able to experience again tonight.” Maggie Kang, the Korean-Canadian film-maker who six days earlier had collected the Oscar for best animated feature for KPop Demon Hunters, was among those in attendance. “Just this crowd, and this open public space – it’s so awesome that Korea is able to do this,” she says. View image in fullscreen Yu Hye-sun (44), a Seoul office worker, has come with friends whom she met at BTS’s last concert before their military service (above). A person carries BTS merchandise and inspired goods and a K-pop light stick ahead of the concert (below). BTS are seven South Korean men who became, by almost any measure, the biggest band in the world. Over little more than a decade, they sold hundreds of millions of records, became the first Korean act to top the Billboard Hot 100 and address the United Nations, and built a global fanbase known as ARMY. They did it largely in Korean, at a time when the industry insisted the language was a commercial barrier. View i...