According to Haejoang Cho, cultural anthropologist and Professor Emeritus at Yonsei University, and Jeffrey Stark, a PhD candidate in anthropology at Yonsei University, since becoming a democracy, South Korean youth culture has seen several waves, the first being the “New Generation,” who were raised in an affluent consumer society in a post-democratic world between 1987 and 1997.
1Haejoang Cho and Jeffrey Stark, “South Korean Youth Across Three Decades,” in The Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society, ed. Youna Kim (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 121. Cho and Stark add that this “New Generation” was optimistic and individualistic, refusing to conform to the norms while setting themselves new modes of cultural expression and self-realization.
2Cho and Stark, “South Korean Youth Across Three Decades,” 121. Following the Asian financial crisis of 1997, financial uncertainty pushed many young people into the traditional family and school environments, where students were pitted against each other in an increasingly competitive job market. Excelling academically was not enough to guarantee a job, so Korean students were immersed in building their “specs,” a set of resumé-building activities consuming their free time, meaning they sacrificed self-expression and creativity for future job security. The “spec” generation grew up dependent on their parents and families, but circumstances continued to decline for the following generation. Young Koreans from the 2010s earned the nickname the “Give Up” Generation.
3Cho and Stark, “South Korean Youth Across Three Decades,” 127. Cho and Stark claim that issues like overwork or suicide permeated Korean youth, who were exhausted from school and extracurriculars, but on top of that, many felt like they had to give up on even having dreams.
4Cho and Stark, “South Korean Youth Across Three Decades,” 127. The dream of falling in love, having a family, and having children was out of reach, earning this generation a new nickname, the “
3-po generation” (
po meaning to “give up” or “forgo” in English). But after also having to give up the dream of owning a home and getting a job, they became the “no-po” generation; a generation that has given up on everything except personal despair.
5Cho and Stark, “South Korean Youth Across Three Decades,” 127.BTS’s early albums, collectively referred to as the “School Trilogy,” criticized the situation facing the school kids from the “Give Up” Generation, including the lack of job prospects, the competition, and the ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality, while encouraging young people not to give up on their dreams. Songs like their debut single “No More Dream” (2013), spoke directly to youths who felt the lack of prospects had annihilated their ability to dream. The song contained lyrics roughly translating to “No 1. Dream, a civil worker?” referring to the most popular career path many aspired to for its guarantee of financial stability.
6Jiyoung Lee, BTS, Art Revolution: BTS Meets Deleuze, trans. Stella Kim, Myungji Chae, Jiye Won, and Shinwoo Lee (Seoul: Parrhesia, 2019), 333.They refined their message in HYYH. In HYYH, BTS are no longer schoolboys but play the role of young men cast adrift as outcasts of Korean society, and their story set in BU (Bangtan Universe) truly begins. They play discomforted characters running away from their past, with nothing but their friendship for one another. In their fictional roles, they become street kids in menial jobs, hanging out in abandoned swimming pools and train depots, sleeping in dingy motels or shipping containers, getting arrested for petty crime, and in the case of band member V, even growing up in an abusive home. Only Jin seems to come from an affluent background, and his character takes a unique point of view as the observer (and later, a protagonist). The continuous storyline that takes place in BU allows the members to explore stories and themes of trauma, abuse, abandonment, and suicide through their characters. One example for how they can examine the darker experiences of being young and growing up is through the theme of patricide.
In the music videos “I Need U,” and the “Prologue” short film, V stabs his alcoholic father to protect his sister. Patricide was a rare motif in traditional Korean culture, but it began to seep into popular cultural depictions in the early twenty-first century. According to Jiyoung Lee, who teaches philosophy at Sejong University in Seoul, its metaphor represents criticism of injustice and structural violence, but it also stands for killing the existing order of norms and society.
7Lee, BTS, Art Revolution, 478–530.Even in their lyrics, there is socio-critical commentary, such as the criticism of South Korea’s class divide in the song “Silver Spoon/Baepsae.” Tamar Herman for Billboard writes that the song addresses the anxieties of young South Koreans growing up in an unstable economic environment and a hierarchical society that expects conformity without question.
8Tamar Herman, “BTS’ Most Political Lyrics: A Guide to Their Social Commentary on South Korean Society,” Billboard, February 13, 2018, https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/bts-lyrics-social-commentary- political-8098832/. I also find it interesting to note the avian theme in the song used to express social hierarchy: “I have crow-tit legs, and you have stork’s legs. / They said, their legs are worth a million bucks / My legs are shorter, so how do you expect me to keep up?”
9“Genius English Translations—BTS—뱁새 (Silver Spoon/Baepsae) (English Translation),” Genius, accessed November 26, 2022, https://genius.com/Genius-english-translations-bts-silver-spoon-baepsae-english-translation-lyrics. Herman cites that the crow-tit and the stork in the lyrics originate in the Korean idiom: “If a crow-tit walks like a stork it will break its legs,” referring to how people should stay in their lane.
10Herman, “BTS’ Most Political Lyrics.” But BTS actively call for change in their lyrics: “Change the rules, change change / The ones’ [
sic] that came before us want to maintain / But we can’t do that.”
11“Genius English Translations—BTS—뱁새 (Silver Spoon/Baepsae) (English Translation).” The bird metaphor is important to note later on for their album
Wings.
In HYYH, the singles “I Need U” and “Run” resemble love songs at first, but when they accompany the videos and films, they reveal a different layer. Instead of romantic love, they embody themes of love bound by tragic friendship while resonating with youthful defiance, anxiety, pain, and existential suffering. Their videos are unafraid to draw attention to mental health issues, domestic violence, suicide, trauma, and more. The storyline seen in HYYH ends on a tragic note. V throws himself into the ocean from a pier-like structure, and the other members continue their downward spiral following his death, such as Jimin drowning in a bathtub, J-Hope overdosing on pills, Suga setting fire to his hotel room, and Jungkook getting hit by a car. The non-linear narrative leaves the viewer with many questions.
Wings references the
HYYH storyline, but in addition, it intertwines the narrative from Hesse’s
Demian. The combination of the original storyline from BU and
Demian inspired fans to uncover the interconnected narrative like detectives.
12Koreaboo, “Fans are going crazy trying to figure out the meaning behind BTS’s ‘Wings’ series,” Koreaboo, September 7, 2016, https://www.koreaboo.com/news/fans-are-going-crazy-trying-to-figure-out-the-meaning-behind-bts-wings-series/. Fans shared their theories cross-analyzing BTS’s work alongside
Demian on forums like Reddit, blog posts, Tumblr, and even YouTube video essays. How BTS used
Demian to express their story and message will be explored in detail in the next section.