BTS, Leaders in the Age of Globalization

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Photo from Twitter @BTS_bighit

Although these days pretty much everyone and their brother knows about BTS, you know it's a big deal when BTS is mentioned even by the World Economic Forum as a representative example of globalization.

Spreading Korean culture and language through music and more to the rest of the world!

The World Economic Forum is a not-for-profit foundation that engages top political, business, and other leaders in order to display entrepreneurship in the best public interest with the highest standards of governance.

As many of our readers are no doubt aware, BTS has made many remarkable achievements throughout the last year. Perhaps most notably, they made a speech about self-love at the United Nations General Assembly earlier this year in September, two of their new albums, Love Yourself: Answer and Love Yourself: Tear, made it to the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart, and they were featured on the cover of TIME Magazine and voted number one in TIME's Person of the Year 2018 reader's poll.

Photo from Twitter @BTS_twt

These days, people can often hear the word "globalization" thrown around, and in most contexts, it is usually interchangeable with the spreading of Western culture, or "Americanization." Some spectators say that this rapid spread of American culture is harmful in that it adds fuel to the fire that is causing smaller localities, cultures, and languages to die out.

However, that may not always the be case, as has been demonstrated by both Latin artist Luis Fonsi and now also BTS. Luis Fonsi's song Despacito was remarkable in that it was the first video in all of YouTube to reach five billion views.

However, when taken into consideration the fact that the number of people who speak Spanish as their first language is actually larger than the amount of people using English as their first language, it may not be a far stretch to have gotten as many views as it did, remarkable though it may be.

When looked at in those regards, however, the achievements of BTS this year are even more impressive. BTS songs are primarily in Korean, not Spanish, and may contain bits of English but mainly only a few words or phrases sprinkled here and there. Statistically, the Korean language does not even make it onto the top ten list of most spoken languages in the world. Meaning, even despite the fact that most of the world and a huge chunk of their fandom may not even understand their lyrics, BTS has led their own sort of globalization.

Globalization is not American or even Western in essence. Globalization is simply a spread of sorts that extends beyond the borders of countries, nations, and even language. Making an impact in globalization, BTS has been recognized continuously by large-scale organizations from all around the world, and they are being recognized not only as world-famous pop stars, but as true global influencers. Possibly even able to be dubbed the Leonardo da Vinci of the 21st Century, BTS has truly made outstanding accomplishments in the spread of culture, even that of a smaller country like Korea, throughout the rest of the world.

By Bongbong and Malina Fairchild voomvoomk@gmail.com