Why BTS Named Their Album ARIRANG: The 600-Year-Old Song, the Seven Students, and the Comeback of a Generation
BTS returned from a four-year hiatus with one of the most culturally layered album titles in music history. None of the songs on ARIRANG are called “Arirang.” But the name carries the weight of an entire nation’s history, and understanding it changes how you hear everything on the record.
What Is Arirang?
Arirang is Korea’s most beloved folk song, often called the unofficial national anthem of the peninsula. Believed to be more than 600 years old, the song has no single author and no definitive version. Scholars estimate there are over 60 distinct regional variations and approximately 3,600 lyrical permutations, all built around the same refrain: “Arirang, arirang, arariyo.” Every province in Korea has developed its own version, from the Gyeonggi Arirang sung in Seoul to the Jindo Arirang from South Jeolla Province, birthplace of the pansori folk music tradition.
The word itself is ambiguous in meaning, but linguists have theorized that “ari” meant “beautiful” and “rang” referred to a beloved one or bridegroom. Emotionally, the song carries what Koreans call han, a complex, layered feeling that blends sorrow, longing, injustice, and resilience into something that is difficult to translate but deeply felt. The melody can sound almost cheerful on first listen. The feeling underneath it is anything but.
At its core, Arirang is a song about separation. “You are going over Arirang Hill. My love, you are leaving me. Your feet will be sore before you go ten ri.” That theme of someone leaving, and someone waiting, runs through virtually every version of the song ever recorded. It is also, not coincidentally, a central theme of BTS’s return after four years apart from each other and from ARMY.
The 1896 Recording and the Seven Korean Students at Howard University
The oldest known recording of Arirang was made not in Korea, but in Washington, D.C., in 1896. The story of how it got there is remarkable.
In May 1896, The Washington Post ran a headline that read: “Seven Koreans at Howard: Ran Away from Home to be Educated in United States. All Are Sons of Noble Families, But Do Not Understand a Word of English.” The article described a group of young men from elite Korean families who had fled their schooling in Japan, made their way to Vancouver, and eventually arrived in Washington, D.C., broke and stranded.
Korea in 1896 was in the final years of the Joseon Dynasty, a period of intense political and financial turbulence as outside powers competed for influence over the peninsula. The students came to America seeking a Western education at a time when such opportunities were almost entirely closed off to them. Systematic racial segregation in the United States, upheld by the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that same year, meant that most universities would not accept them. Howard University, founded in 1867 as a Historically Black College and University, was one of the few institutions willing to open its doors.
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Korean Minister to the United States Suh Kwang Bum, himself a progressive reformer living in political exile, helped arrange the students’ enrollment and provided financial support. He was a man navigating his own displacement; some accounts suggest he died of tuberculosis within months, never having been permitted to return to Korea.
While at Howard, the students became known around campus for singing Korean folk songs, particularly at social gatherings. Local press described their music as “unique,” noting that Americans had simply never heard anything like it. That reputation eventually reached American ethnologist Alice C. Fletcher, who typically focused her research on Native American music. On July 24, 1896, Fletcher invited three of the students, Ahn Jeong-sik, Lee Hee-Cheol, and Son Rong, to her home and recorded them singing on a wax cylinder phonograph. She did not know what the word “Arirang” meant, so she labeled the recording “Love Song: Ar-ra-rang.” Those six wax cylinders are now preserved at the Library of Congress, representing the earliest known audio documentation of Arirang in history.
Fans have noted with obvious delight that there were seven Korean students at Howard in 1896, and there are seven members of BTS in 2026. The album artwork and promotional materials appear to deliberately echo the visual language of 19th-century studio portraiture, framing the members as spiritual successors to those original travelers, young Koreans who carried their culture abroad and shared it with the world.
How BTS Wove Arirang Into the Album
BTS HYBE Chairman Bang Si-hyuk confirmed in a Billboard interview that the choice to name the album Arirang was deeply intentional. The album’s opening track, “Body to Body,” samples the original folk melody of Arirang in its closing minutes, grounding the entire record in its cultural roots before expanding outward into hip-hop, pop rock, and electronic territory.
Perhaps the most striking cultural statement on the album is track six, “No. 29,” which contains no rap, no singing, and no beat. It is a single, unedited field recording of the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok, a 1,255-year-old bronze bell cast in 771 AD and designated as South Korea’s National Treasure No. 29. The track runs for one minute and 37 seconds, precisely matching the natural fade time of the bell’s resonance inside the Gyeongju National Museum. Bang discovered the bell during a private tour of the National Museum of Korea and described sitting in its dedicated exhibition space, listening to the sound, as a transformative experience. “I felt this sound should be used as an interlude in the album,” he said.
The song’s title is a direct reference to the bell’s designation in Korea’s national treasure registry. Placing it at the center of a global pop album is one of the more quietly radical cultural statements any artist has made in recent memory.
Gwanghwamun Square and the Meaning of the Comeback Stage
The decision to hold the comeback concert at Gwanghwamun Square was not logistical. It was symbolic. No standalone concert had ever been held there before. Gwanghwamun is the main gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace, the royal palace of the Joseon Dynasty that ruled Korea for more than 500 years until 1910. The square today is home to statues of King Sejong, who created the Korean Hangul writing system in 1443, and Admiral Yi Sun-shin, the naval commander who led Korea’s defense against Japanese invasions in the 16th century. It is one of the most historically and politically significant public spaces in the country.
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When BTS emerged from the stage as the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok rang out over the crowd and Gyeongbokgung Palace was illuminated behind them, the symbolism was unmistakable. Suga said from the stage: “It is an honor to be able to perform at Gwanghwamun, the most historic place in Korea. We wanted to capture our identity in this album. That is why we chose ‘Arirang’ as the album title, and with that feeling we decided to perform at Gwanghwamun.”
The Netflix livestream drew 18.4 million viewers across 190 countries, reaching the weekly top 10 in 80 countries and the number-one spot in 24. In the crowd, people from around the world who had never spoken a word of Korean sang along to the Arirang refrain.
What It All Means
BTS has spent years navigating the tension between their Korean identity and their global audience, releasing English-language hits like “Butter” and “Dynamite” that dominated Western charts while maintaining a Korean fanbase that wanted the music of BE and Map of the Soul. ARIRANG resolves that tension not by choosing a side, but by making the point that the two were never in conflict.
The album’s title does not reference a song on the tracklist because it was never meant to be a song title. It was meant to be a statement about who BTS is and where they come from. Arirang survived Japanese colonial rule, when singing it was a criminal offense. It survived the Korean War, which divided the peninsula and the people who shared the song. It was recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage by both North and South Korea. And it was first recorded by seven young Korean men, a long way from home, who found a university willing to accept them and sang the songs they knew to anyone who would listen.
One hundred and thirty years later, seven young Korean men put that same song at the center of one of the biggest album releases of the decade and performed it in front of the palace their ancestors built.
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