SEOUL -- The manager of South Korea’s popular boyband BTS has apologized on behalf of one of its members who went to a bar in April, contrary to government advice, just as the country is trying to contain a recent coronavirus outbreak around Seoul’s club scene.
Jungkook, the BTS’ main vocalist, visited a restaurant and a bar in the Itaewon neighbourhood with friends on April 25, the boyband’s management Big Hit Entertainment said on Monday.
A new cluster of virus cases emerged in that neighbourhood this month as social distancing measures eased on May 6, prompting authorities to delay school reopening and close bars and clubs again.
“We have no excuse that we placed the artist’s personal life before we were able to emphasise the importance of social distancing. We bow our head in apology,” the company said.
The 22-year old, who was there before the first case among Itaewon clubgoers was confirmed, is not showing any symptoms and has tested negative for the coronavirus, Big Hit said.
“He is also deeply regretting on how he did not follow social distancing measures seriously.”
South Korea has been lauded for its quick and effective response to the pandemic but the resurgence of cases has raised concerns about a second wave of infections here
Before the rules were eased on May 6, authorities had allowed clubs and bars to stay open as long as they complied with strict social distancing measures, while advising people not to visit them.
Local media reported three other boy band members were with Jungkook during that outing, including Cha Eun-woo of Astro, Mingyu of Seventeen and Jaehyun of NCT.
The managers of all three issued statements confirming they were in Itaewon on the same day as Jungkook, apologising for their failure to follow social distancing measures. Jaehyun posted a handwritten apology on social media.
As of Monday, 170 cases have been traced to the Itaewon outbreak, with several hundreds in self isolation, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The seven-member BTS suspended their world tour over coronavirus concerns last month.
-reuters-
SEOUL - K-pop megastars BTS on Friday canceled four concerts they were due to hold in Seoul in April, their agency said, as the coronavirus outbreak spreads in South Korea.
The country has so far confirmed more than 2,000 cases of the novel coronavirus, by far the largest national total outside China, the origin of the disease.
"We regret to announce" that the Seoul concerts have been cancelled, BTS agency Big Hit Entertainment said in a statement.
How BTS shot a ‘top secret’ video in Grand Central Terminal
The four concerts, scheduled to take place between April 11 and 19 at Seoul's Olympic Stadium, home to the 1988 Games, were expected to draw "over 200,000" BTS fans.
It was "impossible at this time to predict the scale of the outbreak", it said, creating uncertainty over the movement of staff, equipment and fans, making the cancellation "unavoidable", it said.
The move came after the boy band held a press conference to promote their new album in an empty hall on Monday because of the virus.
BTS -- or Bangtan Sonyeondan, which translates as Bulletproof Boy Scouts -- are the first K-pop group to top charts in the United States and Britain.
Their latest album "Map of the Soul: 7", released last week, was the most pre-ordered South Korean album of all time, with more than four million copies sold before its release.
kjk/slb/qan
Agence France-Presse
NEW YORK — The video clip of BTS, the South Korean boy band, performing at Grand Central Terminal is only 6 minutes long. But it took almost 2 months to arrange for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” to film the K-pop group dancing beneath the celestial ceiling inside the iconic train station.
BTS is wildly popular, a singing and dancing global phenomenon with millions of fans and dozens of awards. Last year, their music video for the song “Boy with Luv” generated 74.6 million views in 24 hours, a record.
How did they manage to pull off filming inside a busy transit hub that welcomes about 750,000 visitors every day?
Timing is everything.
The “Tonight Show” production team approached Metro-North Railroad, which runs Grand Central Terminal, to schedule a time to shoot last December, said Meredith Conti, manager of special events for Metro-North Railroad.
Once the day, Feb. 8, had been agreed upon, the crew of about 180 members, including dancers, a marching band, camera operators and members of the production team arrived to set up at Grand Central Terminal at about 10 p.m.
“It’s Saturday so it’s a much quieter time,” said Catherine Rinaldi, president of Metro-North Railroad.
She added: “We are over the moon about how successful this has been.”
The terminal, home of the MTA Metro-North Railroad and a subway station serving the 4, 5, 6, 7 and S lines, was still open as usual (it closes at 2 a.m.) But it was the weekend, when traffic is not as heavy, said Conti, who has overseen hundreds of productions in her 14 years on the job and was present the day of the shooting.
“I’ve seen quite a few,” Conti said. “This was pretty cool.”
It was a “top secret” mission to keep BTS hidden.
The backup dancers and the marching band stayed in Vanderbilt Hall and the North West Balcony rooms rehearsing while the crew set up their multiple cameras, Conti said.
Then, at about 12 a.m., RM, Jin, SUGA, J-hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook — the members of BTS — got to the terminal, which remained open.
It was important that the public not catch a glimpse of the K-pop group members because their appearance on “The Tonight Show” was a surprise.
“They were not in the public areas while we were still open,” Conti said. “It was top secret.”
It wasn’t until 2 a.m., when the terminal had officially closed to the public, that BTS set foot on the main terminal floor.
They had 2 hours to nail the perfect video clip of “ON” from their new album, “Map of the Soul: 7,” before the terminal’s cleaning staff came in to wash the floors. The doors would open to the public again at 5:15 a.m.
Jimmy Fallon and BTS rode in a special subway.
The episode, which aired Monday night, also featured a #FallonAsksBTS segment in which the seven members of the group rode the subway with Fallon while answering some of the questions their fans, also known as the army, posed on Twitter.
“Can you ask BTS, when they make a song, what comes first, the melody or the lyrics?” Fallon asked the group on behalf of a fan.
The segment was filmed inside an R160 subway car two days after the Grand Central Terminal video, said Sarah Meyer, chief customer officer with the New York City Transit. Fallon’s team had contacted the agency in December, Meyer said.
But this was no regular commute: The train used for the segment is no longer operational but is rented out for special events, including TV and film productions, as well as training, Meyer said.
“It was moving while the cameras were rolling,” Meyer said.
Two train operators, one on each side of the train, were in charge of transporting Fallon and BTS back and forth along a track from a Bowery platform to a Canal Street platform.
The shoot, which was eight hours, took place on a recent weekday afternoon, Meyer said, but they managed to keep it secret, too.
“We wanted to keep the number who knew about this to a minimum,” Meyer said. “It was kept quiet.”
You, too, can shoot a video at Grand Central.
Every year, the staff of Grand Central Terminal accepts 20 to 30 large-scale production requests from TV and film companies, Conti said.
Movies with scenes filmed inside Grand Central include “Men in Black II” and “The Proposal.” The location has also been used for music videos like “Carry On” by Fun and “Legend in Your Own Time” by Carly Simon.
Productions are usually scheduled for the weekend or overnight, avoiding rush hour and aiming for times when service does not have to be disrupted, Conti said.
Small-scale productions, like wedding shoots or student films, which do not require more than one camera or additional support from her office, usually take place between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., outside rush hour.
Conti said that her staff grants about 500 of these requests per year. The Terminal does not allow any recording from late November to late December, when traffic is heavier because of the holidays, Conti added.
(If the price is right.)
“The Tonight Show” did not film inside Grand Central for free.
The Terminal charges a labor fee that includes staff used to supervise the production, electricians, on-site safety and customer service representatives, as well as a rental fee for the space, Conti said. She declined to comment how much Fallon’s show paid for the BTS shoot.
“The Tonight Show” also paid to rent the special subway.
“We were really excited about this one because we do believe that Jimmy Fallon and BTS bring diverse communities together and that’s exactly what New York City Transit does as well,” Meyer said. “There is good synergy.”
But back to the rental fee: When the MTA wrote a message to BTS and Jimmy Fallon that read, “Thanks for riding with us” on Twitter, one person replied, “Take the money they gave you and fix the damn trains.”
source: news.abs-cbn.com
SEOUL -- K-pop superstars BTS were releasing their new album Friday, breaking records even before it came out as the country's most pre-ordered album of all time, with its lead single the first track to make its debut on video app TikTok.
BTS -- or Bangtan Sonyeondan, which translates as Bulletproof Boy Scouts -- have gained a huge global following, becoming the first K-pop group to top charts in the US and Britain with a string of sold-out shows in Los Angeles, Paris and London's Wembley Stadium.
Their latest effort, "Map of the Soul: 7", was launching worldwide at 6 p.m. Friday South Korean time.
The digit is a reference to the number of members in the band, and the years since they made their debut.
The group rolled out a 30-second preview of lead single "ON" exclusively on TikTok Thursday, momentarily causing the short-form video app to crash.
They are the first band to introduce a single via TikTok, and the snippet offered a challenge titled #OnChallenge -- where fans were invited to use the sound to create their own videos.
More than 33,000 videos were made using the track by Friday morning, including fans dancing and reacting -- in places including classrooms.
"Guys I'm so excited and nervous and probably gonna skip a few minutes of my biology lesson and listen to Mots: 7 at the toilet," one fan posted on Twitter.
The song "ON" is "like a diary of our past seven years," BTS member RM told Apple Music. "We stumble from time to time but we got back up... It's like a declaration that we have admitted our destiny."
The collection is already the most-preordered South Korean album of all time, with more than 4.02 million copies sold.
"We did expand our musical spectrum," RM said, on the group's remarkable career since its debut. "In 2013 we had a performance in front of 300 people, 500 people. But now we are doing stadium tours, so everything's got bigger and happier."
Another Twitter fan posted: "Finally it's coming and I'm so proud of Bangtan. We will break records again and we will be even stronger together."
But one dark cloud on the band's otherwise stellar horizon has emerged: a high-profile concert initially scheduled for March 8 in Daegu has been cancelled due to the novel coronavirus outbreak in the city.
Agence France-Presse
Here they are making their #BBMAs Magenta Carpet debut... it's @BTS_twt! 👏 pic.twitter.com/rlt8wT2lQR
— BillboardMusicAwards (@BBMAs) May 21, 2017
Korean group Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS) made history as the first
Korean group to be nominated and win an award at the 2017 Billboard
Music Awards in Las Vegas.
BTS won the Top Social Artist award edging out other nominees like Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande and Shawn Mendez.
The group's win also ended Bieber's six-year winning streak.
.@BTS_twt accepts Top Social Artist presented by @ion360, thanks to you guys! 💕 #BBMAs pic.twitter.com/lZWEuYXp6I
— BillboardMusicAwards (@BBMAs) May 22, 2017
In their acceptance speech, the group thanked ARMY, their official fan club.
"ARMY, our fandom, thank you very much. We still cannot believe that we're standing here on this stage at the Billboard Music Awards, oh my gosh," BTS leader, Rap Monster (Kim Nam-joon), said as they accepted their award.
BTS is the second Korean artist and first K-pop group to ever be nominated at the Billboard Music Awards
In 2013, Korean singer Psy won the Top Streaming Song (Video) award for "Gangnam Style." He was also nominated for five other categories on the same year.
BTS was recently in Manila for their two-day Wings Tour Concert.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
