Illustration by Richard Chance
For BTS Fans, It Has Never Been Just About the Music
Years of waiting for the Arirang world tour have unleashed an Army. Not that the K-pop supergroup ever really went away.
On Friday, Jan. 22, at 9:02 a.m, the virtual queue for BTS’s US tour presale was already in the hundreds of thousands. By the time Genesis Salone logged into Ticketmaster from her work desk — decorated in the group’s signature color purple with a matching purple iPad and her favorite BT21 plush toy, Koya, close at hand — at 11 a.m for the Chicago presale start time, the Dayton, Ohio, resident was mildly eased to see that her queue number was 9,500.
“I literally told my supervisor, I’m going through a lot right now. I will get back to work. This is official Army business, and I have to lock in,” the 25-year-old clerical worker says.