By end of 2021, when IU , BTS' lifelong enemy which fought it whenever she felt like and practically the only singer in the entire world which did not fear BTS because she was one of the few who remembered BTS's days as nobodies, began to creep up and wrested Korea from BTS' hand by making her killing voice video the most watched video in Korea in the year, Bang and BTS members should have realized that the Koreans had no love of them, and they would choose IU, and later NewJeans, over them.
BTS did not bother to attend the Melnn Music Awards in 2021 because it was doing a big concert in Los Angeles. In revenge, MMA gave the Artist of the Year award to IU, who is the first person in the entire history of the award to win int non-consecutively (she won it on 2014 , when MMA was not a serious award, to prepare her for the Grand Prize at Mama , which gave her the Lifetime Achievement Award instead).
Bang and BTS should have realized that no matter how they tried they would never get the love of Koreans.
Instead of going elsewhere from Los Angeles, they returned to Korea, for reasons which confounds me to this day, which was now ruled by IU.
If they ran a whirlwind concert from Dec 2021 to say Jun or July 2022, they would easily have grabbed north of $1 billion and silenced IU and all the local incels of Korea, showing how great BTS was.
And Min Heejin would not be acting so uppity against BTS, trying to play hide-and-seek whenever they go in order to avoid them.
We can only guess what Bang was thinking. Maybe Bang was afraid of BTS getting bigger than him , and he liked playing mogul in Korea along with the owners of Samsung, Hyundai, etc.
But holding a concert , again and again, as the biggest events of the world back then would have given the world's attention.
Instead the members released solo numbers which no non-Armies listened to. Seeing the BTS members kicking back in Korea led currency to the incels' argument to drag them all to the military. If they were doing concerts outside of Korea, the incels' arguments would have been weakened.
With the world's ethos changing because of current events, I don't see BTS doing as well as what it would have done in 2021-22 in late 2025, when the world will be very different from what we know now.
They might clear $1 billion but the $1 billion won't be what a $1 billion was in 2022.
The members get older, the fans get older, newer fans will follow whatever Bang will float and whatever Min Heejin will float, and the whole world won't push an act where most of the members are now past 30, hardened and wizened up after the military, etc.
BlackPink concerts made a huge stir around the world but with its future far from certain it was more like a last hurrah.
Historians will only imagine how far BTS would have risen if it ditched Korea altogether, leaving it to IU and NewJeans, making it a minor league so IU and NewJeans can boast winning at the National Invitational Tournament (a tournament where those who didn't make the final tournaments go to), and concentrated on the world like what Twice is doing now with 4/9 of its members not from Korea.
