When a British band goes on hiatus to pursue a solo career, things tend to get a bit tetchy. From the Beatles to Take That, One Direction to Little Mix, there’s always a quietly ferocious battle for one of the group to become The Big Breakout Star. Not so with BTS, the K-pop boy band sensation that’s topped charts around the world.
While the seven members have been rotating through mandatory military service for South Korea, they’ve been taking it in turns to keep the home fires burning for their legion of dedicated fans: the Army. At 32 Kim Seok-jin, better known by his mononym Jin, is the oldest member of BTS and thus the first to enlist and the first to return to civilian life. He’s been hard at work, releasing two EPs — Happy (2024) and Echo (2025) and embarking on his first solo tour, the RunSeokjin Ep. Tour, with nine stops of two dates in each city.
The queue (incredibly ethnically and culturally diverse, but 90 per cent women) was huge yet orderly at his first night at London’s O2; one staff member was volubly relieved when she spotted us at the end of it. People had been there for hours decked out in costumes and merch, handing out ‘freebies’ (generous homemade packets of photocards and memorabilia) and cheerfully lining up to get their hands on an Army Bomb — not a security risk, but a Bluetooth-enabled lightstick that connects to create a sea of colourful orbs pulsing in time to the beat.
When Jin stepped out at 8pm on the dot, the screams reached a fever pitch unheard of since an early Elvis concert. Wearing a letterman jacket and T-shirt emblazoned with his name, Jin sauntered down the traverse to a rapturous response before he’d even sung a single note of Running Wild. Given his trademark in BTS is being ‘Worldwide Handsome’, he leant into that matinee idol identity with soulful looks around the stadium as he crooned his repertoire of love songs. When he donned a denim jacket for Americana country banger Rodeo and flashed glimpses of his biceps, the screaming went stratospheric. It’s not always serious though — fan favourite Super Tuna is about romancing a fish. There were multiple people wearing tuna accessories or full-on fish costumes.
Jin clearly does not take himself too seriously. How do you fill a two-hour gig slot with just a handful of your own songs to your name? Turn it into a madcap gameshow extravaganza, with the London Army invited to play along as part studio audience, part teammate. Games include telepathically communicating song titles to Jin or singing his own lyrics back to him, while he gamely takes on forfeits like wearing a silly inflatable alien costume or sitting underneath a tray that could be dropped on his head. It’s an extension of his web series Run Jin (Dallyeora Seokjin) where he takes on challenges and silly games, giving fans a fully immersive experience that, honestly, was a complete hoot.
His voice is beautiful, his love songs catchy, but it’s the crowd work that blew me away. So many major artists phone it in with a generic “hello insert-city-name-here” patter, and that’s when they’re communicating in their first language. Jin had both carefully prepared lines to deliver and a real-time translator on hand so he could deliver his more deadpan jokes or emotional conversations in his native language. It underscored the mutual respect between fan and artist that is missing from so much of Western music culture. Everyone learns the lyrics, no one throws things at the stage or beefs with their fellow concert goers.
Jin closed out the show with a BTS megamix and not one, not two, but three encores, before promising in a roundabout way that BTS would be back soon. Girls around me were sobbing happy tears with new friends. It was like nothing I’d experienced before. My cheeks hurt from smiling, my throat hoarse from screaming. If this is Hallyu then I’m happy to let the Korean wave crash over us all — I wish I’d got one of those lightsticks now.
The RunSeokjin Ep. Tour at London O2, until August 6.
