BTS Wins “Global Popular Artist” Award at Hanteo Music Awards Ahead of First Full-Group Performance in 3 Years and 9 Months

BTS received the “Global Popular Artist” award at the 33rd Hanteo Music Awards held on February 15 at the Olympic Stadium in Seoul. At this ceremony where winners were announced across various categories, from the organization’s top honor to newcomer awards, BTS achieved a notable milestone alongside G-Dragon’s win for “Side to Side.” This award comes as BTS prepares to hold its first full-group performance in 3 years and 9 months, serving as another confirmation of their global influence. The group’s comeback concert scheduled for Gwanghwamun Plaza next month is expected to draw between 200,000 and 300,000 attendees. It is estimated that 30% to 40% of these will be foreigners, meaning around 100,000 overseas fans will gather in Seoul. An industry insider predicted, “Considering the crowd sizes of their concerts abroad, such as in the UK, along with free ticket policies, this will set a record for a single concert.” Within 48 hours after BTS announced its tour plans, search volume for inbound trips to Seoul from foreign countries increased by 155% compared to the previous week. Searches for Busan, one of the tour locations, also rose by dozens of times during the same period. It is anticipated that tourist numbers in Seoul, home to many K-culture experience venues, will increase significantly, with some predicting that the city will welcome over 20 million foreign tourists this year for the first time—comparable to major global tourist destinations like London (22.7 million) and Tokyo (over 25 million). Last year, Seoul welcomed approximately 15 million foreign tourists, a rise of about 2 million from the previous year (13.14 million), and BTS’s concert is expected to further accelerate this upward trend. Since over 90% of BTS’s revenue comes from countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Mexico, it is likely to help improve the existing tourism structure that was heavily dependent on China and Japan. The government and Seoul city are preparing extensive safety measures, anticipating that up to 260,000 people may gather on concert day. The Ministry of Interior and Safety plans to hold a coordination meeting with relevant agencies in the second week of March to discuss crowd management, emergency response systems, and traffic control strategies. Seoul city will divide the event area around Gwanghwamun Plaza to distribute crowd density and use CCTV and urban data for real-time monitoring. As part of traffic management plans, subways near Gwanghwamun will operate non-stop before and after the concert, and some bus routes may be rerouted. Firefighters and ambulances will be stationed around the venue in case of emergencies, with emergency vehicle routes also being secured. Meanwhile, BTS ranked first in a big data analysis of boy group brand reputations for October 2025. According to approximately 64.77 million pieces of data measured by the Korea Corporate Reputation Institute from September 11 to October 11, BTS scored 121,588 in the participation index, 1,400,561 in the media index, 3,341,969 in the communication index, and 2,799,063 in the community index, resulting in a brand reputation score of 7,663,180. Although this figure dropped by 14.14% compared to the previous month (September), BTS still led by a large margin over other groups such as SEVENTEEN (2nd place) and Stray Kids (3rd place).