South Korean Pop group BTS on Tuesday announced that they will be going on an 'indefinite hiatus'' to pursue individual careers, but promised they would 'return someday'. BTS members RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook dropped the news during their streamed annual Festa dinner, part of a celebration that marks their anniversary as a group. In the hour-long video, the members also drank, joked and reflected on their history together.
RM, leader of the group, said that after the Grammy-nominated BTS' last few singles he "didn't know what kind of group we were anymore," adding later that group members were "exhausted." "I've always thought that BTS was different from other groups But the problem with K-pop and the whole idol system is that they don't give you time to mature. You have to keep producing music and keep doing something... I've changed as a human over the past 10 years, so I needed to think and have some alone time. Right now when we're at our best I feel like I should be contributing something to the world, but I don't know what that is," RM said.
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Suga said, “It’s not like we’re disbanding. We should live doing what we want to do. We’ll probably die when we reach 100 and we can’t be BTS until then, I don’t think that’s an easy feat to achieve. Writing lyrics is the hardest. What message do we want to give? Nothing comes out anymore."
J-Hope said that the time apart would be healthy for the group and urged fans not to view the development as negative. “This is also a new direction for us as a company, the attitude towards solo projects has changed," he said. J-Hope said that "change is what we need right now" but offered hope for the group's return by adding "it's important for BTS to start our second chapter."
A spokesperson for the group informed Billboard that despite the hiatus, “BTS will continue to be active in various different formats, including working on solo projects.”
