5 revealing takeaways from the BTS biography ‘Beyond the Story’

From overcoming industry bias to reckoning with misogyny, here are five takeaways from ‘Beyond the Story: 10-Year Record of BTS,’ a biography of the K-Pop sensation. Promoting BTS was a DIY endeavor for the group In comparison to the “big three” Korean entertainment companies that debuted many of the era’s K-pop stars, Big Hit Entertainment might be considered more of a startup. Kang writes that the vlog approach to self-promotion was “a complete rejection of genre norms in Korea’s idol industry, where every frame of every video was perfectly produced for public consumption.” And yet it was exactly this sense of spontaneity and intimacy that fueled BTS’ fanatical fan base. But now that I think about it, you were never the best / I will stop calling you best and instead call you gonorrhea.” In July 2016, Big Hit and BTS issued a statement responding to the complaints, saying, “We learned that music creation is not free from societal prejudice and fallacies,” and “Furthermore, we became aware that it may also not be desirable to define the value of women and their role in society from a male perspective.” RM, who wrote the lyrics, told Kang that this early reckoning helped him recognize the problem in time to change his attitude and behavior. “But now it felt, not like we were in the mainstream necessarily, but we were being welcomed more.” Jung Kook said winning the award felt like the beginning of a new chapter: “Who would’ve thought we could win artist of the year at an American awards ceremony?