The Soft Power of BTS

Download a transcript.

Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You Listen

Sign up to person our play cultural-recommendations newsletter.

The K-pop radical BTS—by galore metrics, the astir fashionable set of each time—had a meteoric ascent earlier its members were called distant by South Korea’s mandatory subject service. Now, astir 4 years later, the radical has returned with a caller record, “Arirang.” On this occurrence of Critics astatine Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz delve into the medium arsenic good arsenic the live-streamed performance and documentary that person accompanied its release, some connected Netflix. “Arirang” is being framed arsenic a instrumentality to the group’s Korean roots, albeit 1 that signifies a new, much mature epoch for its members, who are present successful their precocious twenties and aboriginal thirties. The hosts see BTS’s meticulously crafted representation and its narration to its devoted followers, known arsenic ARMY. Intense fandom is thing new—just inquire the Beatles—but K-pop stans are peculiarly invested successful the lives (and livelihoods) of their favourite idols, adjacent paying for the accidental to connection them directly. “This further privatization of what we telephone parasociality,” Cunningham says, “if that tin beryllium monetized and organized, it truly is the last frontier of the popular star.”

Read, watch, and perceive with the critics:

BTS’s “Arirang”
“BTS: The Return” (2026)
“KPop Demon Hunters” (2025)
Justin Bieber’s “Swag”
“The K-Pop King,” by Alex Barasch (The New Yorker)
The euphony video for BTS’s “Swim”
“Judy Blume: A Life,” by Mark Oppenheimer
The Beatles’ “Let It Be”

New episodes driblet each Thursday. Follow Critics astatine Large wherever you get your podcasts.