BTS: Beyond the Story

Season 2

As BTS’s debut began shaping up, the trainees at Big Hit Entertainment
were divided into two groups. One was the high-potential group of trainees
who seemed ready for their debut, and the other group was made up of
trainees whose debut wasn’t yet confirmed. RM, SUGA, and j-hope were in
the first group.
______I thought, ‘Wow, I want to be there, too.’ Because I’d come here
because of Rap Monster.
Jung Kook was famously brought on by Big Hit Entertainment in 2011
at one of the auditions for Superstar K3, a TV audition program on Mnet.
But the story of how a Busan middle schooler named Jeon Jungkook
decided to come to Cheonggu Building in Seoul is a bit more complicated
than that. Jung Kook had already received business cards from seven
different entertainment companies during the Superstar K3 auditions.
______None of them really told me why they wanted to sign me. I
remember one of the companies wanted me to come to a hotel room
near the Superstar K3 audition site for an audition. They wanted to
get a video of me singing.
The first reason Big Hit managed to beat the odds and secure Jung Kook
was, oddly enough, MBC’s Star Audition: The Great Birth, a direct
competitor to Superstar K. On that show, Bang Si-Hyuk was featured as a
mentor for the auditioning hopefuls. Jung Kook says:
______Bang Si-Hyuk was famous, according to my dad, and he suggested I
try going into his company.
Just as RM used the Internet to learn about rap artists, Jung Kook
searched the Internet for more information on Big Hit Entertainment and
learned of the rapper trainees there who were preparing for their debut,
including RM, whose rap videos were available on YouTube. Jung Kook
says:______Hyung’s rap was great and his English was so impressive, I said,
“This is where I’ll go!”
But when he auditioned for Superstar K3, Jung Kook wasn’t sure he
wanted to be a singer necessarily.
______Sports, art, music … I was pretty good at arts and sports, which
made me think, ‘Maybe this is where my aptitude is.’ So as I was
wondering whether to do sports or art, I thought why not try
becoming a singer. That was a job a lot of people would appreciate,
so I auditioned. It wasn’t exactly a joke, but I wasn’t worrying
myself going, ‘What if I fail?’ either.
Meeting Rap Monster, whom Jung Kook had gotten to know through an
Internet search, as well as a host of other rappers at the dorm he eventually
entered, was like seeing a new world open before him. From his first day
there in June 2011, it was like getting several older brothers all at once.
Jung Kook remembers:
______j-hope would come back to the dorm really late and take out a meal
from the fridge and eat it, while going, “Do you want some?” to me.
And the “hyungs” would take their new little brother everywhere. Jung
Kook laughs as he remembers:
______Not long after I entered the dorm, one of the hyungs played a prank
on me. He claimed anyone who just moved in had to buy everyone
bingsu. So I did, and we all ate it together.
The three hyungs who had gone to auditions to achieve their dreams.
The little brother who went to an audition program and became a trainee
after being inspired by such hyungs. This slight generational difference
foreshadowed that the world was about to change not only for Jung Kook
but for the rapper trainees as well.
This “Season 2,” as referred to by j-hope, was a prelude to “Idol
Season.” To the future members of BTS, idols—along with hip-hop and
their bond with each other—became another cornerstone of their identity.

Each in Their Position

V also had a less-than-smooth journey from his hometown of Daegu to the
Cheonggu Building in the fall of 2011.
______We were ripped off by the cab driver. My dad and I got on and paid
38,000 won to go from Express Bus Terminal to Sinsa Station. I
remember clearly that we passed three tunnels.6 I still remember
what the cabbie said as we got off: “Be careful, lots of people here
try to force customers into premium taxis to rip you off.”
The moment V first entered the dorm was like arriving at a new and
mysterious world. V remembers:
______Jung Kook was at a lesson so he wasn’t home, and j-hope, RM, and
SUGA were there.
V didn’t think his expectations from before he arrived in Seoul would
change. He says:
________I figured I would not be in the same team as them. ‘The three of
them love music and do hip-hop, and I guess I’m just someone
who’s only living here with them.’
V, a high school fresher, had become a trainee at Big Hit only six
months after he had begun taking dance classes. Ever since he had sung
onstage at his elementary talent show, he had wanted to become a
performer, and he had played the saxophone since his first year in middle
school with the goal of entering an arts high school. But K-pop dance was
something he had learned in a hagwon over a period of six months. This
was why he’d had no intention of auditioning when the A&R team at Big
Hit had come down to Daegu to his dance hagwon to find new trainees.
______Just the fact that an entertainment company would come down from
Seoul was a novelty to me, so I went just to watch. They had
auditioned only the kids who had gone to the hagwon for two, three
years when at the end, one of the A&R people pointed at me and
said, “Can we see that kid dance, too?” and then I got in.
Around the time V entered the dorm, RM, SUGA, and j-hope were
already working at a recording studio provided by Big Hit Entertainment.
The three were already posting songs on the BTS blog before their debut,
having built up enough expertise in rap, composing, and dance to hold long
discussions on these subjects. SUGA in particular was desperate to debut:______Father used to hate people in music. But … once I passed my
audition and began showing up on posters, he would brag about me
a lot. Which made me think I’d better debut soon. Even if I’d fail to
make a mark, I wanted to have debuted.
In contrast, Jung Kook and V only began training in vocals and dance in
earnest when they joined the dorm in 2011. To V, the trio of RM, SUGA,
and j-hope were already artists. V recalls:
______The three hyungs were so good at music, so dedicated to their work,
and they seemed like experts to me. I was just happy to be a trainee
by their side.
Having just started as a trainee, the prospect of a debut seemed very far
away to V.
But just six months later, when Jimin came up from Busan in May
2012, the others—including V—struck him as being ready to debut
immediately. Jimin recalls:
______I’m very shy and I was nervous … I was trembling. I came to the
dorm and there were so many shoes in the foyer … The shoes
overflowed into the apartment. But even that was really cool. The
hyungs came out, and they were trainees but already looked like
celebrities to me. RM in particular looked exactly as a celebrity
should. And V was such a classic idol. Really handsome and
wearing a red snapback cap.
The older boys who did hip-hop and the boy who was the same age and
looked as good as any idol. The trainees, as seen through Jimin’s eyes, were
already entering their “Idol Season.” Rappers who lived and died by hip-
hop, the dancer who was influenced by them to write his own rap lyrics, the
vocalist who was just learning to dance, and the youngest who showed
potential in both song and dance. Jimin found it difficult to imagine such
disparate talents ever coming together as one team.
______I was convinced the hyungs would debut first as a hip-hop group.
I figured I would not be in the same team as them. ‘The three of them
love music and do hip-hop, and I guess I’m just someone who’s only
living here with them.’ But Jimin’s arrival was a preview of how the planning for their group
would go in a different direction. If they were to become an idol group
together, Jimin would join j-hope as one of the main dancers but bring a
completely different sort of flair to the team.
Before he came to Seoul, Jimin had already been spending his teenage
years in dance.
______We had an afterschool break-dance club, and I remember a bunch of
boys just got together and said, “Hey, do you want to try this?”
Which became, “Should I really?” We gathered to practice on
Saturdays when we didn’t have school, and then did an actual
performance … That’s when I felt it, the thrill. I completely fell for
dance.
Jimin’s main criterion for choosing a high school was also “a place I can
learn dance,” and, hoping to become acquainted with a larger variety of
dance, he specialized in contemporary dance at the Busan High School of
Arts. To his parents, he explained his goals of learning dance in Busan,
auditioning, and moving to Seoul. He remembers his first impressions of
the capital:
______I thought, ‘Well, Seoul is the same as Busan.’ Like, ‘That’s it?’
(laughs). I had come with my father because I was transferring
schools.
Unfortunately, Jimin, like V, also fell victim to a taxi scammer.
7
________It might take as little as fifteen minutes to get from Express Bus
Terminal to the company offices, but it took over half an hour. I’d
taken a taxi because I wasn’t familiar with the subway lines, and the
fee came out very high. My father had gone down with me to Busan,
but the day I went into the dorm, I came to Seoul alone. And that’s
when I first met j-hope, who had come out to get me.
________Are you Mr. Park Jimin? (laughs).
j-hope still recalls the moment he first met Jimin.
______That’s how we first said hello. “Jimin? Mr. Park Jimin?” Like that.
We said hello and talked on the way up to the dorm. I asked him if he danced and he said, “Yes, I did Popping,” and I said, “Hey, I did
street dancing, too.” “I hope we’ll be able to help each other!” That
kind of thing. It was a somewhat awkward conversation (laughs).
It’s not easy to imagine a rapper from the Hongdae stage and a
contemporary dance major who started out as a break-dancer making music
in the same team. But approximately eight years later in early 2020, BTS
would combine elements of both disciplines in “Black Swan.” This melding
of contrasting talents occurs sometimes in the K-pop industry, where idol
groups are normally composed of a variety of positions such as rapper,
dancer, and vocalist. And the members’ even more diverse personalities and
backgrounds become a touchstone that allows their fans to emotionally
immerse themselves in their characters and music, as long as a harmonious
team was formed in the first place.
A team spearheaded by a group of underground rappers that included a
middle schooler who had just started lessons needed more than just
cohabitation to cohere into a group—they needed some form of alchemy.