Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan

I think that's a BTS original recorded in the style of an acapella group like the Four Freshmen.

It's a blues.

What follows is maybe the one track in the back half of this album that returns to some of the themes the group explored in the first half, the Korean-ness of their background.

So, Hyejin, we just heard this line, we're just big boys, aka country kids.

Getting a little bit of that history from just a single line in They Don't Know About Us

brings us back to the question we were posing at the beginning of this.

How is BTS positioning themselves, re-emerging from this hiatus?

When they went on hiatus, the effect on the K-pop industry at large was so profound that, according to one study, Korean album sales dropped almost 20%.

So...

The world that BTS is reemerging into is different.

Is there a new Korean act that is ready to take the mantle from them?

It's unclear.

Now, their tour, which is the first since 2019, has already sold out globally.

These songs are on the Billboard Hot 100.

I think despite some of the criticisms or disappointments that longtime fans might feel, this album is hugely successful.

But will they be able to put the country, the soft power of the Korean wave on their backs once again?

We'll see.

Building on what Hyejin just said, there's a really cool story that I learned, actually a bit of music history that was totally new to me.

In 1896, seven Korean students

traveled to the United States to study in Washington, D.C.