ARMY turns Busan into a BTS birthday bash, but poor concert logistics puts a damper on some of the festivities

BUSAN — “Happy Birthday” rang out along the walkway leading to Busan Asiad Main Stadium on Saturday, as BTS fans gathered to celebrate the world’s biggest boy band on the 13th anniversary of its debut. The mood was festive, purple and unmistakably devoted.

But as tens of thousands of BTS fans, known as ARMY, waited for the Busan stop of the group’s “Arirang” world tour, many had more than birthday wishes to share — especially after the first night of the two-day concert run on Friday was delayed by 75 minutes.

Long lines, confusing crowd routes and logistical delays left some fans wondering whether the city and organizers were fully prepared for the scale of the celebration they were hosting.

“Yesterday was chaotic — really, really bad,” said Luisa Ariella Dani, an Indonesian fan who secured tickets for both Busan concerts and had also attended the Goyang kickoff of the “Arirang” tour in April. She described Friday’s show as “the most chaotic concert I’ve ever been to.”

“It’s really disorganized here,” she continued. “You don’t know where to queue, and the line is moving very slowly. Even if you already paid for the items on Weverse, when you went to pick them up, they were sold out or pickup time was over. Someone next to me couldn’t get inside for sound check because she was in line for the light stick for three hours.”

Getting into the venue was also confusing, she added, made more difficult by the heat. Concertgoers were not allowed to use some stairs and had to “go around and around” to reach their seats, she said.

Similar complaints over logistics flooded social media after Friday’s show and again after Saturday’s finale, which was also delayed by 20 minutes. The most common issues included confusion over entry procedures, hectic queues leading to the venue, limited entrance points and transportation shortages. Busan Asiad Main Stadium is about a 30-minute drive from Busan Station, and taxi availability fell short of demand around the concert.

HYBE issued an apology on Saturday over the delayed entry.

“We deeply apologize to all attendees in the audience who came to watch the ‘Arirang’ world tour for the inconvenience caused by the delay in the start of [Friday’s] performance,” the agency said in a statement on Weverse, its fan community platform.

HYBE said the delay was caused by a combination of factors, including confusion in on-site guidance, bottlenecks in the distribution of fan gifts and delays in merchandise pickup.

Mira, a Malaysian fan who has supported BTS for the past eight years, had visited Korea several times before, including for the Goyang concert. Her friend Mas, who is also from Malaysia and who has visited Korea eight times, said her trip from Seoul to Busan had been smooth.

“It’s crowded, but not as busy as Seoul,” Mira said.

Mas described her Busan experience overall as “good,” though both said they had experienced Friday’s chaos firsthand.

“Many people couldn’t go inside,” Mira said. Mas added that the internet connection around the venue had also been unstable.

Still, the fans were determined to celebrate the anniversary.

“I love their music and lyrics,” said Dani, whose birthday coincided with BTS’s debut anniversary on Saturday, explaining why she has remained a devoted ARMY member for six years. “It really helped me go through a lot of difficult times too.”

Mas cited BTS’s “music and the members’ individual personalities” as the reason she has stayed a fan, while Mira added with a smile — “They love ARMY very much.”

Over the two-day concert run, a total of 110,000 attendees gathered at the stadium.

As crowds flocked to the city, more than 3,000 personnel from HYBE, the Busan City Government, police and firefighting units were deployed for safety and crowd control across Busan, including some 300 police officers stationed around the stadium on the days of the performances.

The Busan Metropolitan Police also deployed about 70 officers to crack down on illegal ticket scalping, identifying 10 cases involving 11 offenders. Each was fined 160,000 won ($105), including one person who was caught selling a 220,000 ticket for 680,000 won, more than triple its original price. Another man was found reselling his paper wristband to a fan.

BY SHIN HA-NEE  [[email protected]]