The internet made BTS. ‘Arirang’ asks what comes next.

The first thing BTS ask for on Arirang, the group’s long-awaited fifth studio album, is simple: “Put your phone down.”

It sounds almost cliché in an era of screen fatigue, but coming from BTS, it lands with a strange kind of dissonance. This is, after all, a group that didn’t just benefit from social media but helped define how K-pop stars are expected to exist within it.

For over a decade, BTS have lived not just on the internet, but through it, building a global audience by turning screens into something intimate. Their practice room videos and late-night livestreams didn’t just document their rise — they changed what proximity between artist and fan could feel like. It didn’t matter that BTS were thousands of miles away or spoke Korean; the screen bridged the distance. It made every post, every update, feel immediate, like a digital exchange between friends.