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K-pop superstars BTS announce world tour

The Love Yourself tour, BTS's third worldwide trek, will bring the Korean Wave phenomenon to arenas across Europe, North America and Asia

By IQ on 27 Apr 2018

BTS ‘Boy in Luv’ Rap Monster, Suga, Jung Kook, Jimin, V, J-Hope, Jin CJ E&M Center, Sangam-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, Jeon Han/Korea.net

image © Jean Han/Korea.net

Korean pop megastars BTS have announced Love Yourself, a seven-country (so far) world tour set to be their biggest yet.

BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan, or Bulletproof Boy Scouts), arguably the world’s biggest boy band, are one of the first K-pop acts to achieve lasting success outside Korea, last year collaborating with Steve Aoki and the Chainsmokers’ Andrew Taggart and performing on US TV institutions such as the American Music Awards and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. At home, the seven-piece also topped Forbes’s Korea Power Celebrity list in 2017.

A remix of their song ‘Mic Drop’, released in February, peaked at no28 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the first chart entry by a K-pop group.

The band’s last tour, Trilogy Episode III: The Wings Tour, was seen by more than half a million people in Asia, Australasia and North and South America. The tour was particularly well received in the arenas of Latin America: according to the New York Times Magazine, the band’s March shows at Movistar Arena in Santiago reached an “earsplitting 127 decibels” – the loudest ever recorded at the venue – while their online popularity had become so entrenched in Chile that tour promoters didn’t even bother with a traditional media push”.

“BTS will launch a brand-new tour this year, entitled Love Yourself, following last year’s success of the Trilogy Episode

The Love Yourself tour will will kick off with two hometown shows in Seoul in August and wrap up at Paris’s Accorhotels Arena in October. It will also visit the O2 Arena in London, Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin and Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome.

“BTS will launch a brand-new tour this year, [en]titled Love Yourself, following last year’s success of the Trilogy Episode begun in 2014,” according a statement from tour promoter Big Hit Entertainment. “We have only released the concert schedule whose dates and venues have been confirmed, and will announce further schedules as they are confirmed later on.”

Other acts part of the ‘Korean Wave’ of pop groups making headway outside Asia include Exo, Big Bang, Girls’ Generation and Super Junior.

Boom in K-pop shows as Korean Wave hits the west [updated]


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