At some point over the past few years, my eldest child has gradually grown to love K-pop dance. Before long, that led to learning BTS choreography and becoming familiar with their music.
It started with dance videos, then BTS choreography, and before long BTS songs had become a regular soundtrack in our house. Spending entire summer holidays listening to Korean music in the car probably helped.
So when BTS announced their long-awaited return and world tour earlier this year, my child immediately asked about the London concerts.
The shows were scheduled for July at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
We have visited the stadium several times for football matches, but it is quite a journey from where we live in South London, and an evening concert with children felt like a much bigger undertaking. We talked about it, but never seriously committed to buying tickets.
Then, on the evening tickets went on sale, I casually checked the booking website.
Big mistake.
The sale had opened at 1 p.m.
I logged in around 6 p.m.
The queue in front of me?
435,800 people.
I stared at the screen for a moment wondering if I had misread the number.
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium holds a little over 60,000 people. Yet hours after tickets had gone on sale, hundreds of thousands of fans were apparently still waiting in the queue.
I closed the website almost immediately.
A few days later, the subject came up while I was having brunch with a friend. Her daughter is also a huge BTS fan, and all four members of the family had been online the moment tickets went on sale, each armed with a laptop, phone, or tablet.
None of them got tickets either.
At that point I realised this was not an ordinary concert. It was more like trying to win a lottery.
Apparently the London dates sold out within minutes.
Meanwhile, I had wandered into the queue five hours late and somehow expected to find seats still available.
Needless to say, attending the concert seemed unlikely.
Or so I thought.
A Different Way to Watch a BTS Concert
A few months later, an email appeared in my inbox.
Selected BTS concerts would be streamed live to cinemas around the world.
The timing worked perfectly. One of the Seoul-area shows fell during the Easter school holidays, and because of the time difference it would be shown in Britain at 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
Instead of going to a stadium, we booked seats at a cinema in London.
I reserved tickets nearly two months in advance and was surprised to see how many seats had already been taken.
On the day itself, we arrived at a Vue Cinema inside Westfield, bought popcorn, and settled into our seats.
As far as I could tell, we were the only Korean family in the auditorium.
The audience was mostly young women, but there were also middle-aged fans, older fans, and a handful of men attending on their own.
Then the concert began.
Suddenly I Understood the BTS Phenomenon
I would not describe myself as a devoted BTS fan.
Thanks to my children, I knew the songs and could identify the members, but that was about it.
Yet within minutes I understood why they had become global superstars.
The stage presence was extraordinary.
Even through a cinema screen, the energy filled the entire stadium. The choreography was incredibly precise, yet never felt mechanical, and maintaining that level of performance for several hours was impressive in itself.
Jungkook, in particular, helped me understand why he is so popular. His singing, dancing, and stage presence all felt consistently strong. Whenever the camera focused on him, the loudest cheers in the cinema seemed to follow.
Jimin was captivating to watch. His movements were graceful and expressive, and his new long blond hairstyle suited him remarkably well. Even small gestures caught my eye.
V looked effortlessly cinematic whenever he appeared on screen. He has the kind of face that seems made for close-ups, and the reaction from British fans was especially enthusiastic.
J-Hope brought an enormous amount of energy to the stage. His dancing was outstanding, and even through the screen it felt as though he was enjoying every second of the performance.
What fascinated me most, however, was the audience.
Every close-up of a member triggered cheers somewhere in the cinema. Fans sang along to Korean lyrics with remarkable confidence.
When I was twenty, I could never have imagined a Korean artist being streamed live to a cinema in Britain while international fans sang along in Korean.
Yet here it was, happening on an ordinary Saturday morning in London.
One Small Disappointment
The only thing that did not quite work was the live subtitle translation.
The English captions were often awkward and occasionally several seconds behind.
As a Korean speaker, I could follow what was being said, but I felt sorry for international fans relying entirely on the subtitles.
For a production of this scale, the translation deserved to be much better.
K-pop Has Become Surprisingly Normal
A couple of months passed, and then last Saturday another BTS concert was streamed live to cinemas.
This time, my niece was visiting from Germany, so the four of us went together.
After the children’s basketball session, we stopped for an English breakfast at a local pub before heading to our neighbourhood Odeon.
Watching the concert for a second time brought a different kind of enjoyment. I found myself comparing the stage production, noticing differences in the members’ performances, and paying more attention to the audience reactions. Perhaps because the tour was nearing its end, the whole show felt more relaxed and confident.
The cinema experience was better this time as well. At the Vue screening, someone had apparently forgotten to turn off the lights for quite a while after the concert began. At Odeon, however, staff were actively checking the sound and picture quality throughout the screening. They even announced that we should let them know if we wanted the volume adjusted.
It made for a much more comfortable viewing experience.
Once again, the auditorium was fairly full.
In the end, we never managed to get tickets for Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, but this turned out to be an experience in its own right.
Sitting in a local London cinema on a Saturday morning and watching a concert taking place live in Korea is not something I would have imagined a few years ago.
A Korean concert streamed live to cinemas in Britain. International fans singing along, even during the Korean lyrics. My own child counting down the days until the broadcast.
The concert itself was excellent, but I also found myself feeling grateful for the fact that experiences like this have become such a natural part of life.
