BTS: Beyond the Story

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Outsiders

A trainee on the cusp of debut is, naturally, the subject of everyone's attention.

Company staff members are responsive to their every move, and even seemingly unapproachable CEOs and company owners have encouragement to spare.

And of course, support and expectations from friends and family are at an all-time high.

But when the trainee finally makes their debut and appears on a music show, they see the cold, hard reality: the world is not that interested.

Each episode of a typical Korean music ranking program, which essentially plays all week long, features about twenty artist teams ranging from freshly debuted newbies to veteran performers who have been onstage for decades.

The finale is always performed by the most popular artist of the episode.

During the filming, most of the artists featured that day wait in the green room with the other artists. In this teeming crowd, up-and-coming idol-even ones from the biggest management companies-are practically anonymous in a sea of new faces.

They are lucky if no one happens to hear a bad word out of their mouths and spreads awful rumors about them in the industry.

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Even now, I remember that one row next to the broadcast camerasduring our first performance.

~Jimin

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Even among new artists, BTS were outsiders, practically stranded on anisland of their own.

And this was not just because Big Hit Entertainment Was such a small company.

Jin looks back on their plight as they waited inthe green room for their performance:

______I was so curious that I asked another artist, "How do you have somany friends here?" And they said, "Oh, this person was at my management company before." "What about that person?" I asked,and they'd say, "Oh, we used to be trainees together at my old management company." It was like that with most people. They Didn't become friends after their debut, they were already friends before that. But our company was the very first for all of us. So, at that point, we stopped leaving the green room altogether.

Just as many trainees left Big Hit Entertainment before BTS's debut, itis common for idols-in-training to change management company's multiple times.

And due to the sheer size of the biggest management companies, a significant number of trainees develop friendships with contemporaries from other companies.

But the members of BTS had never been associated with other companies, and they had no particular cause to interact with other trainees.

RM and SUGA had switched from hip-hop to the idol industry, and the other members had no time to turn their gaze outward because they were always listening to hip-hop at the dorms with RM and SUGA and perfecting their choreography in the practice studio.

Jimin describes how it felt to be in the same space as other artists at the very beginning of BTS's career:

______I still have no idea why, but we seriously only ever stuck with one another. And I think it must have been hard for other people to approach us, too. We were all clearly on edge because we were determined to do hip-hop, not meeting other people's eyes ...(laughs)