On September 18th, 2017, the South Korean boy band, BTS, released Love Yourself: Her, the first album in the Love Yourself Trilogy. Their message of loving yourself, although a common one, captivated their vast audience. Their song topics, which are still stigmatized today (especially in Asia), deal with suicide, depression, mental health, as well as the struggles that the youth of today continue to face. These topics allow BTS to create a meaningful connection with their fans, assuring them.
But their effort to continue to spread their message did not stop there. In September of 2017, after the release of the first album in the Love Yourself series, BTS partnered with UNICEF for their Love Myself campaign that is aimed towards “pursuing love and a better place to live for all”. Their campaign is one that encourages participatory culture since “the public [are not] simple consumers of preconstructed messages but as people who are shaping, sharing, reframing, and remixing media content” (Henry Jenkins). Their massive fan base has not only spread their message but it has also caused the message to stick. Their success in “sticking” can also be attributed to the networked communities/culture that their fan base has created. Through several social media platforms, namely Twitter, BTS’ fanbase have retweeted, reblogged, and have loudly proclaimed their responses and support for the group’s message.
This effort eventually led to the group being invited to the recent UN General Assembly in New York. On September 24, 2018, BTS, spoke at the launch of Generation Unlimited. Namjoon Kim, the leader of the group, spoke about the group’s belief that “true love first begins with loving myself”. Kim spoke of his dreams as a child, of how he “began to worry about what other people thought of [him] and started seeing [himself] through their eyes.” He spoke of how he “tried to jam [himself] into the moulds that other people made” and how he “shut out [his] own voice and started to listen to the voices of others.”
His speech references something many young adults, teens, and children feel: pressure. It is a pressure of an immeasurable amount that is forced upon us from such a young age. It is something that many people can connect to. This is only one example of how they’ve sought to relate to today’s youth in order to help them recognize that they are not alone in their struggles. Their message has stuck and spread because of its relatability and the genuineness in which it is spread.
References
“About LOVE MYSELF – LOVE MYSELF”. LOVE MYSELF, 2018, https://www.love-myself.org/eng/about-lovemyself/. Accessed 31 Sept 2018.
“K-Pop Stars BTS At UN Urge World’S Youth To ‘Just Speak Yourself’”. South China Morning Post, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2165602/k-pop-stars-bts-united-nations-new-york-urge-worlds-youth-just. Accessed 2 Oct 2018.
BTS Speech At The United Nations | UNICEF. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/?gl=CA. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.
Husain, Kasim. “Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, And Joshua Green “Why Media Spreads””. 2018.
Jenkins, Henry et al. Spreadable Media. NYU Press, 2013.
Meixler, Eli. “Http://Time.Com”. Time, 2018, http://time.com/5405422/bts-k-pop-united-nations-address/. Accessed 31 Sept 2018.
Wilkinson, Bard. “K-Pop Band BTS Tells World Youth To ‘Speak Yourself’ At UN”. CNN, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/24/asia/bts-un-korea-intl/index.html. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.