South Korea’s Conservative Government Says BTS May Perform During Military Service

South Korea’s Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup said in remarks to lawmakers on Monday that pop superstars BTS “should come to the military” for their mandatory service and, in turn, the military should allow them to hold concerts abroad and otherwise maintain their careers while serving.

BTS is South Korea’s most popular musical act and one of the most beloved, and lucrative, groups in the world, holding multiple world records and topping international pop charts. BTS band members are especially popular in America, where they became the first Korean act to debut at the top of the Billboard 200 charts and the first to be nominated for a Grammy Award. Their international profile has greatly benefitted the South Korean economy and boosted the country’s international profile, one of the world’s most successful examples of “soft power,” or the use by a country of cultural influence or other non-government means to generate clout.

BTS’s ongoing success has long been in jeopardy under the looming need for its seven members to fulfill their military obligations as South Korean men. The nation — technically at war with communist North Korea since 1950, though the two sides ended active hostilities in 1953 — mandates that all able-bodied men serve two years in the country’s military. Most must meet the obligation between the ages of 18 and 28; Seoul granted BTS a deferment to age 30.

The oldest member of the group, Jin, will turn 30 this year, triggering the military service requirement.

Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup did not appear to consider the possibility of lowering the two-year service requirement or exempting BTS from serving in the military during his remarks to the National Assembly on Monday. He did, however, argue that having the artists serve could be a tremendous publicity boon to the armed forces and that, given the tangible benefits that BTS’s success has brought to the country, the military should find ways to ensure that the band can continue to perform.

“They should come to the military, and I believe there will be a way for us to give them the opportunity to practice as well as allow them to leave the country and perform anytime if they have overseas concerts scheduled,” Lee said, according to the Korea Herald.

“Many people do think highly of military service itself, and I think (BTS members enlisting) can actually help them with their popularity,” he reportedly added.

The National Assembly’s National Defense Committee was addressing the ongoing debate over offering men, particularly popular artists, who fit exceptional criteria a form of “alternative service” to the military mandate. Lee suggested allowing BTS members to perform abroad while serving as soldiers as a potential compromise.

“We are reviewing (the matter) within the overall framework of alternative service,” he was quoted as saying.

The issue of alternative service appears to be a separate debate from one that began in the legislature last month about the possibility of limiting the amount of time served to three weeks, rather than two years, in the military. Yoon Sang-hyun, the lawmaker proposing shortening the amount of service time told Reuters last month that BTS had “done a job that would take more than 1,000 diplomats to do” and thus deserved the government to acknowledge that their artistry was a form of service to the nation.

“A Gallup opinion study in April showed nearly 60 percent of South Koreans supported the bill exempting internationally successful K-pop stars from full military service. Thirty-three percent of South Koreans opposed the bill,” Voice of America noted in July.

The administration of conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol won this year’s election in a contentious campaign in which mandatory military service became an issue. His opponent, leftist Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung, said last year that he was hesitant to consider granting the group an exemption to the service even while acknowledging that their success was beneficial to South Korea as a whole.

“Mandatory military service is a public duty set by the Constitution and we must be prudent about granting exceptions … We can’t deny (BTS’) contribution to the nation, but we must be careful because it will be hard to draw the line if we expand (the scope of exceptions) like this,” Lee said during a forum in December. “In perspective of fairness, I think it is more desirable to allow military service deferment (for BTS), and exemptions should be refrained from as much as possible.”

The military service requirement has doomed popular Korean boy bands for decades, though none had experienced the level of success internationally that BTS currently has. Among the bands to have come closest to doing so, however, is the BTS predecessor Big Bang, which at its peak was the first Korean pop (K-pop) band listed on the Forbes “Celebrity 100” list and sold over 140 million albums worldwide. The band began to unravel as its members began reporting for military duty in 2017: member T.O.P. reportedly suffered a drug overdose and was demoted to a public service office for another drug scandal; member Seungri is now in prison and a registered sex offender after being convicted of organizing prostitution services and illegal gambling while his bandmates were in the military; G-Dragon, the most popular member, was not similarly engaged in scandal but elicited criticism for not reaching the typical promotion levels that recruits reach by the end of their two years. The band, without Seungri, released a single for the first time in four years this spring, but has not yet returned to the levels of success it experienced before temporarily disbanding for military service.

The strain of upcoming military service — or, perhaps, an exemption — for BTS bandmates appeared to partially trigger a conversation broadcast live between the seven members of the band in which they described themselves as exhausted and ready to pause their careers in June, shortly after meeting President Joe Biden for a summit on ending “hate crimes.”

“Doing group activities for so long — just like you guys mentioned earlier, I started to feel like I’ve become a machine. I have my own hobbies and things I want to do on my own,” Jin, the oldest member whose exemption from military service ends this year, said on the livestream celebrating the anniversary of the band’s debut.

“We’re going through a rough patch right now,” another bandmate, Jimin, said. “We’re trying to find our identity and that’s an exhausting and long process. Our fans know us and we know us.”

Suga, a third bandmate, said the band was “entering an off-season,” a comment translated on the livestream as “entering a hiatus.” Given the timing of Jin’s upcoming military service, entertainment news outlets took the remark to mean that the band was temporarily breaking up, prompting a catastrophic collapse for stocks of Hybe, its record label, which dropped nearly $2 billion in value in one day. The incident occurred less than a week after the debut of the band’s latest album, Proof. BTS is responsible for nearly 90 percent of Hybe’s profits.

Hybe representatives desperately tried to claim that the use of the word “hiatus” was a mistranslation and the ban would continue to perform.

“The team never said it was taking a break,” a Hybe spokesperson told South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo. “They made the announcement because BTS had always released albums as a group and they didn’t want to worry or startle the fans when individual releases start coming out.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.