COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic was not merely background chronology in Jungkook’s rise. It altered the conditions under which music was encountered, relationships were maintained, and celebrity was experienced. For BTS, the crisis arrived after years of international growth but supplied a new emotional and technological environment: people confined at home sought consolation, optimism, and a sense of connection, while Jungkook and the other members became unusually available through screens. The pandemic therefore helped convert existing popularity into a broader cultural intimacy, preparing the ground for Jungkook’s later emergence as a solo pop star.

Isolation and the Expansion of BTS’s Audience

The pandemic raised BTS to a new level of success by introducing the group to people who had previously cared little about Billboard rankings or music awards. Their pandemic-era English-language releases—“Dynamite,” “Butter,” and “Permission to Dance”—were presented as music capable of bringing joy during a public-health crisis. “Permission to Dance,” co-written for BTS by Ed Sheeran, celebrated essential workers in its video and ended with people removing their masks to reveal their smiles. The imagery answered a specific emotional need: audiences living through isolation and confinement were offered movement, brightness, and the promise of renewed social contact.

The scale of the breakthrough was measurable. In 2021, BTS surpassed 11 billion streams on Melon, a record for the Korean online music platform. During the same year, “Permission to Dance,” “Dynamite,” and “Butter” reached numbers five, two, and one respectively on the United States Billboard charts, while five other BTS tracks debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. “Dynamite” became the first K-pop song nominated for a Grammy Award. When RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook watched the nomination announcement together and saw BTS displayed beside Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift, their shock and delight marked how far the group had traveled beyond its original market.

The pandemic did not create BTS’s appeal from nothing. Their success remained inseparable from the group’s earlier achievements, the six members who helped form Jungkook, the development of social media, the globalization of popular culture, and the international organizing power of ARMY. The crisis instead intensified these forces. A period of collective uncertainty made sincerity, familiarity, and repeated digital presence more valuable, allowing the group’s music and personalities to function as forms of emotional support.

Digital Intimacy and Fan Participation

The pandemic also changed the practical structure of idol fandom. In-person fan meetings became impossible, so companies moved toward video calls. This removed the requirement that international fans be physically present in South Korea and gave them access to a level of direct interaction previously associated mainly with Korean fans. International album sales surged as fans bought dozens of copies in attempts to obtain video-call opportunities, and some winners became regular participants, building recurring conversations with their preferred idols.

Jungkook’s video calls for Golden show how the new format combined personal performance with ordinary domestic gestures. One fan mixed cider, soju, and beer for a virtual toast and suggested that they share a drink someday; Jungkook answered that he would drink one during a livestream. Another fan showed him baby photographs and asked him to imitate the expressions, which he did with evident enthusiasm. These exchanges were structured by commerce and selection, but they also made the distance between idol and fan feel temporarily negotiable. The pandemic thus expanded parasocial intimacy while giving companies new ways to organize, measure, and monetize emotional attachment.

Livestreaming made that intimacy visible even when nothing conventionally spectacular was happening. Jungkook once fell asleep during a broadcast for 45 minutes while six million people watched. When Jimmy Fallon later mentioned the incident on The Tonight Show, Jungkook responded with embarrassment and explained that ARMY had liked it because it was unexpected. The episode captured the pandemic-era appeal of unplanned presence: the audience was not only consuming a polished performance but also watching an artist occupy time in an apparently ordinary way.

ARMY’s role extended beyond consumption. The fandom, formally named in July 2013, was already an unusually international and digitally skilled community, but the pandemic made its networked capacity especially consequential. International ARMY used Twitter, Discord, Reddit, Tumblr, YouTube, and TikTok to circulate BTS material, connect supporters across borders, and promote the group at global scale. In 2020, ARMY joined other K-pop fandoms to oppose white supremacy and anti-Black racism online, overwhelming the harmful hashtag #WhiteLivesMatter with K-pop fancams and reaction GIFs. The same collective energy supported BTS’s $1 million donation to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, helping inspire fans to match the amount within 25 hours.

Public Health, Representation, and Collective Belonging

The pandemic enlarged BTS’s role as representatives of South Korea. Since the late 1990s, the South Korean government had invested heavily in popular culture after the 1997 financial crisis, using K-pop as cultural soft power. By the pandemic period, BTS had become national representatives whose international visibility could construct favorable perceptions of the country. In 2020, the group’s public opposition to racism and violence demonstrated how that representative role could be connected to a broader ethical position rather than limited to promotional appearances.

In 2021, President Moon Jae-in brought BTS to the United Nations General Assembly, where each member received a red diplomatic passport and a certificate appointing them special presidential envoys for future generations and culture. Dressed in suits, the group performed “Permission to Dance” in the General Assembly Hall, encouraged vaccination, and addressed young people facing difficulty during the pandemic. Jungkook, seated in black with silver earrings visible, spoke calmly and firmly about uncertainty and the possibility that their voices could give people strength. The moment joined personal modesty to national and international representation: a pop performer’s voice became part of a public-health and diplomatic message without losing the directness associated with his relationship with fans.

This movement between national identity and global belonging was central to the pandemic-era BTS phenomenon. The group was promoted abroad as a source of South Korean cultural prestige, yet its audience was not confined to a single nation. ARMY formed a transnational community through shared platforms, shared symbols, charitable action, and synchronized attention. The pandemic’s common vulnerability helped make that community feel tangible. It did not erase differences between countries or between fans and artists, but it gave those separated by borders a shared emotional timetable and a common need for reassurance.

Consequences for Jungkook’s Career and the Group’s Future

The pandemic’s effects continued after BTS announced Chapter 2 at Festa 2022. The members paused group releases so that each could pursue personal projects before mandatory military service, a disruption that would eventually affect their careers regardless of the pandemic. Jungkook took almost five months away from work, while the other members developed sharply different solo paths. The pause made space for individual artistic choices, but the collective foundation strengthened during the crisis remained essential to how each member’s solo activity was received.

Jungkook’s later solo success depended on the convergence of talents and circumstances that the pandemic had intensified: a strong voice, dance influenced by Michael Jackson, a visually distinctive presence, humility, technological access, and ARMY’s international reach. His English remained limited, yet he worked to ensure that language would not become an insurmountable obstacle. After only eight months of solo performances, he had already opened paths for Asian artists, demonstrating how pandemic-era global visibility could be converted into an individual career without severing his connection to BTS.

The pandemic also sharpened the tension between comfort and labor. Jungkook’s bond with ARMY was described as affectionate and genuine, but the industry encouraged forms of attachment that could become commercially intensive. Fans bought multiple albums for access to video calls, collected images, and pursued opportunities to meet him personally. The same digital systems that offered companionship during isolation also enabled companies to investigate and exploit the psychology of falling in love with an idol. Pandemic intimacy was therefore both meaningful and managed: it sustained people through crisis while generating new forms of attention, spending, and emotional work.

The pandemic ultimately became one of the conditions that made Jungkook’s transition from BTS’s golden maknae to a global solo artist possible. It brought the group’s music into homes beyond the established K-pop audience, turned livestreams and video calls into central sites of belonging, amplified ARMY’s participatory power, and placed BTS inside public conversations about health, racism, youth, and national representation. Jungkook’s later achievements cannot be reduced to the crisis, but the crisis changed the world into which those achievements arrived—and changed what a worldwide audience needed a performer to be.