'Welcome to ma city’: BTS puts Busan on K-pop’s tour map

For most K-pop artists, touring Korea still largely means performing in Seoul and its surrounding areas.

The logic is hard to ignore. The capital region, including Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi, is home to more than half of the country’s population, as well as the industry’s biggest venues, agencies, media outlets and production networks. Outside that sprawling metropolitan area, the equation becomes far more complicated.

But BTS is taking its world tour to Busan. And Korea’s largest port city is pulsing with anticipation — not only for the two concerts themselves, but for what may come after them.

With two sold-out stadium concerts in Busan, the septet is raising a question that extends beyond its own tour: Can a Korean city outside the capital region become a regular destination for large-scale K-pop concerts?

‘Welcome to ma city’

“I’ve been so excited to invite you all to my hometown,” Jimin said on Oct. 15, 2022, when BTS held its free “Yet To Come in Busan” concert at Busan Asiad Main Stadium as part of the city’s bid to host the World Expo.

“We couldn’t possibly leave this song out when we are performing in Busan, right?” he added. “Welcome to ma city!”

The group then launched into “Ma City,” a 2015 track in which the seven members pay tribute to their hometowns — from Suga and V’s Daegu and J-Hope’s Gwangju to RM and Jin’s Gyeonggi, and Jimin and Jungkook’s Busan. Some of the members slipped into their regional dialects, a homecoming written into the group’s own music.

A little less than four years later, BTS is returning to the southeastern port city for another concert, this time as part of its ongoing “Arirang” world tour.

BTS opened its “2.0” era after a nearly four-year pause in full-group activities with its fifth full-length album, “Arirang,” released on March 20. The group kicked off its world tour with three shows at Goyang Main Stadium in Goyang, Gyeonggi, just west of Seoul, before heading to the United States, where the tour drew 840,000 fans.

Now, BTS is coming home again — and doing so at a particularly symbolic moment.

The Busan concerts coincide with the group’s 13th anniversary of its debut on June 13, which BTS will mark with the 2026 BTS Festa, its annual celebration with fans.

The "Arirang" world tour is scheduled to take place in Busan on June 12 and 13 at Asiad Main Stadium.

The timing explains why the group had to return to Korea at this point in the tour, while Busan in particular carries sentimental weight as the hometown of Jimin and Jungkook.

BigHit Music, BTS’s agency, has billed the concerts as “a special homecoming.”

“BTS will return to Busan for the first time in about four years for a special ‘homecoming,’” the agency said in a release in May. “The project is especially meaningful as it takes place around June 13, the anniversary of BTS’s debut.”

K-pop tours, not really K anymore

The Busan stop, however, is unusual enough to draw attention.

Major K-pop concerts in Korea remain heavily concentrated in Seoul and the wider capital region, while full-scale domestic tours across multiple Korean cities have become relatively uncommon for idol acts, especially established ones. As K-pop has grown into a global touring industry, many major groups now begin their live tours with Seoul-area shows followed by overseas legs, rather than multiple stops within Korea.

“Artists do sometimes hold nationwide tours, but the facilities are not always ideal, and there are not many large-scale venues,” said a source from a K-pop agency, who requested anonymity. “Busan Asiad Main Stadium is a good venue, but not every artist can fill a venue of that size. Smaller than that, the facilities there are unlikely to be ideal.”

Even when venue capacity is not the problem, infrastructure can be.

“For us, domestic concerts are important, but because many overseas fans also come to Korea, we often choose Seoul so that everyone can gather there more easily, rather than asking them to travel all the way down to Busan after arriving in Korea,” the source said. “That is why Seoul, Incheon and the wider capital region are usually the main focus.”

The greater Seoul area, which includes Seoul, Incheon and surrounding cities in Gyeonggi such as Goyang and Gimpo, has a clear advantage in accessibility. Incheon International Airport and Gimpo International Airport make it easier for international fans to enter the country, while the concentration of hotels, public transportation, production companies and media outlets reduces the logistical burden for agencies and promoters.

That does not mean K-pop concerts never happen outside the capital region; Busan has hosted major K-pop events, including festivals and occasional large-scale concerts, such as K-pop band DAY6's 10th anniversary concert at Bexco in Busan on May 16 and 17. But for most idol acts, regional shows are still the exception rather than the backbone of their domestic touring strategies.

BTS’s Busan concerts may therefore open the door for other major artists to consider the city as a more regular tour stop — if the city can prove that it can support events of this scale.

“It would be greatly helpful if not only BTS but many other groups continued to come here, especially major artists who can draw large numbers of people,” said Kim Yun-kyung, a professor in the Department of Hotel and Tourism at Youngsan University in Busan.

Kim said experience-based tourism has become increasingly important, and that major concerts can play a key role in attracting new visitors to a city.

For Busan to position itself as a global city capable of attracting more tourists and concert stops, accessibility will be crucial, she added, stressing that the planned Gadeok Island New Airport, currently expected to open in 2035, could play an important role in that effort.

“Concert stops are concentrated largely in the greater Seoul region because of profitability and accessibility,” Kim said. “But with the addition of the new airport, Busan can become more accessible not only from other Korean cities, but also from nearby markets such as China and Japan.”

Busan turns into BTS’s city

Coinciding with the “Arirang” concerts, Busan is preparing to welcome an influx of fans and tourists, as the city seeks new growth momentum amid a shrinking, aging population.

“This will be a concert watched by the world with keen interest,” said a Busan city government representative in a release on Friday. “We will do our utmost to ensure that visitors from Korea and abroad leave with the impression that Busan is a tourism city they will want to visit again.”

The Busan city government plans to operate an online information channel to provide concert-related information and tourism content, including a platform for reporting tourist complaints to prevent rampant price gouging.

BigHit Music has also worked with the local government on the Busan edition of its “The City” project, a citywide promotional campaign that expands the concert experience beyond the stadium, similar to its earlier editions in other cities such as Seoul and Las Vegas, which will turn major landmarks across the city into BTS-themed spaces.

“Some people say BTS has gotten old, and it has been about six years since we first won a grand prize,” Suga said during BTS’s 2022 Busan concert. “What’s another 10 years? I think we’ll be here for another 20 or 30 years.”

Nearly four years later, BTS is returning to Busan with that long future already in motion. Whether other K-pop acts can follow the same path remains uncertain, as BTS has enough global demand to turn a regional concert into a destination event and a personal connection to Busan. But for two nights in June, Busan will test whether K-pop’s concert map in Korea can stretch beyond the capital region, and whether it is ready to become one of K-pop’s next major tour stops.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [[email protected]]