ADRN

BTS has been lauded as “a reincarnation of the Beatles” (Le Figaro) and “a global pop sensation” (BBC), and has created a new paradigm for the international community that is otherwise divided by race, language, and nationality. The BTS phenomenon has demonstrated that the Korean Peninsula has the potential become the epicenter of culture in the history of civilization. EAI created a research team of sociologists and international political scientists called “BTS and Attractive Power Theory” in September 2019 to analyze the BTS phenomenon culturally and sociologically and understand the “attractive” elements of BTS. The team will seek to identify what makes BTS so attractive and use these findings as the basis to discuss how to develop Korea into an “attractive power,” and how the BTS phenomenon and cultural content fits into international politics. In June 2020, EAI held an online seminar with music critic Kim Young-dae and published our own BTS book called Narrating the Global Attractiveness of BTS in December, 2020.