Han River is both a physical landmark in Seoul and a recurring point of orientation in Jungkook’s story. It borders the city’s districts, separates and connects different phases of his early life, and becomes associated with the small freedoms available to BTS before their debut. Later, the river’s international visibility mirrors the group’s movement from a cramped trainee world into a national and global public sphere.

Early Life and Refuge

The river belongs to the landscape Jungkook entered after leaving his family home in Busan. As a trainee at Big Hit Entertainment, he lived with roughly nine other adolescents in a modest two-room dormitory in Nonhyeon-dong, in Gangnam, only a short distance from a convenience store where he sometimes ate instant ramen while crying from homesickness. After the seven BTS members had been selected, the company moved them into a third-floor apartment one month before their debut. In the cobalt-painted “Blue House,” seven teenagers shared one room, three bunk beds, and a single bathroom; Jungkook, the youngest, slept on a single mattress on the floor and waited until the others were asleep before bathing because he was shy. The Han River offered an alternative to that compressed domestic life. Alongside the convenience store and the swings at Hakdong Park, the riverside bicycle path gave the members a refuge from punishing schedules. The river was not presented as a grand tourist destination in these memories, but as usable space: somewhere the trainees could move, breathe, and briefly experience a life beyond rehearsals, crowded sleeping arrangements, and the discipline of the idol system. Jin drove the boys in his Mini Cooper, dropping Jungkook at Shingu Middle School, ten minutes from the river, further tying the landmark to the ordinary routines surrounding his adolescence.

Seoul’s Dividing Line and Cultural Symbol

Han River also anchors the book’s account of Seoul’s transformation. “Gangnam Style” drew global attention to Gangnam, the area south of the river, by presenting it as a symbol of South Korea’s new wealth. Land that had once held rice fields and mulberry trees had become broad streets lined with corporate buildings, while the Galleria department store displayed Chanel creams and Louis Vuitton bags. The song’s hypnotic beat, cowboy-like dance, and viral YouTube video made Gangnam legible to Western audiences as evidence of how far South Korea had advanced since the Korean War. This transformation changed the cultural meaning of the city around the river. Before “Gangnam Style,” a male K-pop group succeeding in the United States could still be treated as an implausible idea. The song became a cultural alarm, directing attention toward South Korea’s economic development and helping open the way for later Korean cultural exports. BTS emerged only eight months after a skeptical New Yorker article had argued that a male K-pop group could not succeed in the United States, yet the group’s rise challenged the assumptions that Asian idols were too manufactured, too foreign, or too difficult for Western audiences to understand.

From Riverside Trainees to National Representatives

As K-pop became an instrument of South Korean soft power, places associated with Seoul acquired a larger political and cultural significance. After the 1997 financial crisis, the South Korean government invested heavily in pop culture and entertainment, and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism received funds to promote K-pop abroad. By 2012, a consultative committee had been established to support the expanding Korean cultural wave with hundreds of millions of dollars in allocations. Entertainment that had once been dismissed as lightweight escapism became a major export, and BTS became a source of national pride alongside internationally successful South Korean athletes. The Han River therefore sits between two scales of experience. At the personal scale, its bicycle path belongs to the young trainees’ limited retreats from exhaustion. At the national scale, the urban world around it represents the country that BTS was increasingly expected to embody overseas. Their expanding international schedule exposed them to new cultures and ways of thinking; V later described Jungkook as the most open-minded of the members. The river’s geography thus reflects a broader movement from a local training environment to a public role in which the members were treated as representatives of South Korea and its future.

International Visibility and Performance

The river reappears in the story after Jungkook’s emergence as a solo pop performer. In the eight-month period devoted to solo promotions, he performed on Good Morning America and The Tonight Show, collaborated with Usher, appeared at shows along the Thames in London, and held a surprise performance in Times Square in New York. These locations place him within the visual and commercial geography of global pop, far from the apartment and riverside path of his trainee years. The contrast is especially meaningful because Jungkook’s appeal was repeatedly described as natural rather than manufactured. During a 2017 Vogue session at the JW Marriott in Los Angeles, he entered unexpectedly with widened eyes, bowed politely, and briefly disappeared. He quietly sang to himself in the makeup chair, maintained a smile despite jet lag, and then took the lead during the chorus choreography of “DNA,” moving lightly enough to captivate a film crew indifferent to K-pop. The river is not the site of that encounter, but it helps define the distance traveled between the shy adolescent who needed a private refuge and the performer whose presence could command an unfamiliar international room.

Collective Memory and Meaning

Han River also participates in the book’s account of collective belonging. BTS’s international fandom, ARMY, was named in July 2013 and became a global organizing force, using Twitter, Discord, Reddit, Tumblr, YouTube, and TikTok to promote the group across borders. In 2020, ARMY joined other K-pop fandoms to oppose white supremacy and anti-Black racism online, flooding the hashtag #WhiteLivesMatter with K-pop fancams and reaction GIFs. The river, like the city around it, becomes part of a shared imaginative map through which local experience is carried into international community. That movement from local refuge to global belonging is echoed in BTS’s public obligations. In 2018, the group went to the United Nations to support UNICEF’s education and development campaign after launching “Love Myself.” During the pandemic, they addressed the United Nations General Assembly, received red diplomatic passports, and were appointed special presidential envoys for future generations and culture. Jungkook, dressed in black with silver earrings, spoke calmly about uncertainty and the possibility that their voices could give people strength. Against that global stage, the Han River retains its quieter meaning: it is part of the Seoul landscape in which the members first learned to endure, to grow together, and to imagine a future larger than their immediate circumstances.