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.
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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.
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Agence France-Presse
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
Korean boy band BTS has ended its break from the music scene and resumed promotional activities, K-pop news website Soompi reported Monday.
A source from the band's agency, Big Hit Entertainment, confirmed the end of the group's "period of rest," according to Soompi.
The month-long pause was the first official break of BTS — or Bangtan Sonyeondan, which translates as Bulletproof Boy Scouts — since it debuted in 2013, Big Hit earlier said.
BTS flew out from Incheon International Airport early Monday for an overseas schedule, Soompi added.
Fans of the group, collectively known as ARMY, marked the end of the break with the hashtag #BTSisBack, which topped the list of Twitter trends in the Philippines and worldwide.
The septet is also preparing for a concert in Saudi Arabia on October 11 as part of its "Love Yourself: Speak Yourself" world tour.
The band will conclude the tour with a three-day concert at the Olympic Stadium in Seoul from October 27 to 29.
The K-pop industry is known for cutthroat competition and around-the-clock work hours that include concerts, press events and grueling singing and dancing training when the stars are offstage.
-- With a report from Agence France-Presse
source: news.abs-cbn.com
SEOUL - South Korean boyband BTS are worth more than $3.6 billion to the country's economy every year -- equivalent to the contribution of 26 mid-sized companies -- a research institute said Tuesday.
The floppy-haired songsters were also the reason that one in every 13 foreign tourists visited South Korea in 2017, the Hyundai Research Institute said.
Known for their boyish good looks and meticulously choreographed dance moves, BTS -- short for Bangtan Sonyeondan, which translates as Bulletproof Boy Scouts -- have become one of South Korea's best-known and most valuable musical exports.
Earlier this year the septet became the first K-pop band to top the US album charts, a sign of the genre's growing global appeal.
That appeal has helped boost the brand image of South Korean products abroad, the institute said, making BTS a valuable economic asset.
Researchers estimated the group's so-called annual production inducement effect -- the total economic value generated by related industries -- at 4.1 trillion won ($3.63 billion) annually, the same as 26 mid-sized South Korean companies.
Some 800,000 tourists were believed to have chosen South Korea as their destination last year because of BTS -- more than seven percent of the total visitors to the country.
More than $1 billion in consumer exports, such as clothes, cosmetics, and foodstuffs, were associated with them, it said.
If BTS maintain their popularity they can be expected to generate an economic value of 41.8 trillion won over the next 10 years, the institute added.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
