December 16-22, 2024

Reunion.

When the members of BTS started enlisting in the military, they were upfront from the beginning that they’d all be back to reunite (hopefully for or around Festa) in 2025. We knew they would all enlist around the same time, but we also knew that at least some of them had solo activities planned as well. So it wasn’t clear exactly when they were going, or in what order. It was anxiety-inducing for ARMY, and we became conditioned to dread seeing any Weverse notification that said “Hello, This is Big Hit.”

On October 15th, 2022, BTS played an amazing free concert in Busan, called “Yet to Come”. It was put together at the request of their government as part of South Korea’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo in Busan. BTS was named as “official ambassadors” for the city, with the idea that they would elevate Busan’s image and showcase its cultural appeal to the rest of the world.

Busan ultimately was not successful in its bid for the World Expo, but the “Yet to Come” concert was a massive win for BTS. For two hours, they performed a variety of hits from across their entire discography, and connected meaningfully with fans present, and those watching online. It was in equal measures hyped up and emotional, and it turned out to be their final performance together before going on break from group activities. Two days later, Big Hit announced that the members would be moving forward with their military enlistments.

Jin’s was the first, and it set the tone. ARMY knew it was coming, but it didn’t make it any easier. A few weeks after Busan, and the day after his 30th birthday, Big Hit dropped the announcement for his enlistment, which happened on December 13th. All of his members gathered and put on brave faces to send him off with a smile.

Once Jin was enlisted, the rest of the group either jumped into their solo work, or took a well-needed break. I was still a newer ARMY at the time, and I hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to get to know Jin before he began his service. It almost didn’t feel real that he wasn’t there, and I found myself regretting not having discovered BTS sooner. Would I be able to connect to Jin in the same way I was the others as I was watching them go live on Weverse and/or release their solo projects?

Little did I, (or any of us really) know at the time the elaborate plan Jin and all of BTS had and was putting into place to ensure that ARMY would never NOT feel connected to them while they were gone. In January 2023, we got the first of Jin’s monthly check-in messages for ARMY, a lovely surprise he prepared during the time he was recording content in the last few months before his enlistment. The videos were typically short, but featured Jin doing something cute for ARMY or coming to us with a sweet, heartfelt message. We all begin to look forward to them, and Jin’s monthly check-ins became a highlight for ARMY during Chapter Two—even more so once the other members began enlisting as well. And before we knew it, time started flying by.

The final four (RM, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook) entered their service in December 2023. ARMY was bereft. But we didn’t have time to wallow. Almost immediately, we began to be inundated with even more content they’d all prepared before going. Every time we turned around, another song, an album, a film… we were being spoiled. We barely even noticed the six months we were without any of the members going by because they gave us so much to enjoy. And then suddenly, it was June 12, 2024, and Kim Seokjin was coming home to ARMY.

Playlists & Lyrics

JIN: SINGLES AND COLLABORATIONS SPOTIFY PLAYLIST (link)
JIN: SINGLES AND COLLABORATIONS TRANSLATION COMPILATION (pdf)
ARMY PROJECT 529 WEEK 50 VIDEO PLAYLIST (all YouTube links)

Skip to Content: Day One | Day Two | Day Three | Day Four | Day Five

DAY ONE:

As 2023 began, Jin had only been in service for less than a month, but the uncertainty surrounding the enlistment dates of the remaining six members compounded the sadness of him being away. ARMYs barely had time to sink into that sadness, as I mentioned in the intro, because on January 8th, we received a gift from Jin himself: a video message explaining his idea for keeping in touch with us while he was away.

He told us he’d be recording a series of these messages, little “check-ins” he called them, in his in-between moments during his promotion schedule from the last few months before he enlisted. He said he would pop in whenever he could just to say hi and share a fun moment with us. ARMY was thrilled, even if we didn’t quite know what to expect. But since it was Jin… anything was possible.

Popping in “whenever he could” turned out to be every month during the entirety of his enlistment. Most of the time it was a sweet video in which he’d tell us he missed us and hoped we were well. Sometimes he would tell us what he was in the middle of filming (though ARMY can usually tell just from an outfit or hairstyle, duh), and/or he’d do a cute activity with us.

Often they were centered around a holiday or event happening that month. In February he decorated macarons for ARMY for Valentine’s Day, and followed it up the next month with one for White Day. I had no idea what White Day was when that message came out, so I looked it up. I found out that it’s March 14th, a month after Valentine’s Day. It originated in Japan, but then moved its way around to being celebrated in other southeast asian countries as well, including South Korea. It is a day for giving reciprocal gifts to anyone who gave you a gift on Valentine’s Day in February. Cute! In December he lit a candle on a piece of cake and sang “Happy Birthday” to himself (And V) and told ARMYs to stay healthy. Once 2024 rolled around, he started asking if we were excited to be seeing him soon, and hinting that he couldn’t wait to get back to work.

All of his messages, whether video or photo, were filled with Jin’s cutesy flirting, and they were definitely a pick-me-up for ARMY each month. Ever the consumate mood-maker, he did it because he knew we would be sad and need cheering up. He didn’t HAVE to do it. But, because he’s Jin, he did.

MESSAGE FROM JIN : JAN 2023 💌 (1:10)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : FEB 2023 💌 (2:54)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : MAR 2023 💌 (2:28 - as shown above)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : APR 2023 💌 (3:18)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : MAY 2023 💌 (1:17)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : JUN 2023 💌
MESSAGE FROM JIN : JUL 2023 💌 (2:13)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : AUG 2023 💌
MESSAGE FROM JIN : SEP 2023 💌 (3:41 - as shown below)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : OCT 2023 💌
MESSAGE FROM JIN : NOV 2023 💌 (1:27)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : DEC 2023 💌 (3:12)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : JAN 2024 💌 (2:45)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : FEB 2024 💌 (2:09 - as shown below)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : MAR 2024 💌
MESSAGE FROM JIN : APR 2024 💌 (1:59)
MESSAGE FROM JIN : MAY 2024 💌 (1:39)

Fun Fact:

A Korean in Paris...

Did anyone have Kim Seokjin being a Torchbearer in the Opening Ceremony of the Summer Olympics on their 2024 Bingo Card? I definitely didn’t.

But here we are. Shortly after his military discharge, he received the invitation to be a Torchbearer in Paris, France and it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. And what a proud moment not only for Jin, BTS, & South Korea, but definitely for ARMY as well.

And ARMY lined the streets for Jin as he walked with the torch. Shouts of “Kim Seokjin! Kim Seokjin!” could be heard everywhere, and at one point a flash mob broke out into “Super Tuna”, which made Jin laugh so hard, and eventually he joined in a bit.

Below we have all the footage from that day, even all of the interviews he did, including the adorable one with the French reporter who was fluent in Korean and gave him a giant croissant statue as an award. Ahhhh… Paris.

DAY TWO:

ARMY Project 529 was only a few months into our project when we began counting down the final one hundred days of his service leading up to his discharge in June, 2024. We celebrated with carefully “curated” Dad Jokes in his honor, posting a new one each day on social media. It was a fun way to mark the time, and several other ARMYs paid similar tribute as we all waited for our World Wide Handsome to be returned to us. (We hope they made Jin smile if he saw any of them.)

In the final weeks leading up to his discharge, speculation was rampant as to if Jin would do anything for Festa. We knew he was being released on June 12th, the day before BTS’ 11th anniversary, so would he take part in celebrations on the 13th, or would he be resting and perhaps just give us a livestream? We all hoped, but didn’t want to assume or expect too much.

We should have known that nothing we imagined would come close to living up to the reality of Jin’s actual plan. On June 1st, less than two weeks until his release, ARMY got a notification from Big Hit that blew our minds. Not only would Jin be participating in Festa celebrations the day after his discharge, he would also host an event during which he would personally HUG one thousand lucky ARMYs (picked from a raffle entered through Weverse).

That’s right, Kim Seokjin was going to HUG. ONE. THOUSAND. ARMYs.

And he did. The hugging event wasn’t broadcasted live, but the rest celebration was. It was on Weverse and many of us in the project watched it together in the early morning hours here in the U.S. We laughed and cried together, watching him do dance challenges, have an “Eat Jin” style mukbang, and perform several of his songs… including a version of “Super Tuna” with a brand-new second verse!

Bangtan Bubble: How did Jin’s Festa 2024 celebration make you feel?

Let us know your answer in the comments below or on social media (include #BangtanBubble)!

DAY THREE:

Speaking of… let’s talk about the myth, the legend… the story of how “Super Tuna” became “Super Two-Na”.

As mentioned above, when Jin performed “Super Tuna” at his welcome back celebration for Festa 2024, he surprised us with a brand-new second verse (complete with choreography). ARMY was thrilled. We’d been threatening to chart the song for years, was now the time when we could finally do it?

Sure enough, a few months later, in October, Jin officially released the new version of “Super Tuna”, replacing the previous version with it on all streaming platforms. He also made a new special video for the song as well, this one even more unserious than the previous one, if that was possible.

It WAS possible. This one included Seokjin proposing to a giant tuna with a fish hook, and then dancing around the beach with the tuna in his arms. Yep. It’s amazing.

Jin took to Weverse LIVE, before the release, seemingly to celebrate Jimin’s birthday. He even had pictures of Jimin hung on the wall behind him, and a cake, but at the last minute he laughed maniacally, leapt to his feet and yeeted everything with Jimin on it to the side to reveal his real reason for the LIVE… the announcement of “Super Tuna”’s official release. We know Jimin loves his hyung, so we can only imagine that he was as amused by his antics as the rest of us were.

”Super Tuna” was originally released for Jin’s birthday in 2021 as a gift from him to ARMY. The song was just a little over a minute long and came with a cute performance video, featuring adorably silly choreography. Now, the new video is up to 15 million views in just two months. Though Jin has often laughed about “Super Tuna” over the past few years and told ARMY not to take it too seriously, it’s been clear that it also delights him how much we love the silly little song he created just because he wanted to make time to go on a fishing trip.

"SUPER TUNA" | SPECIAL PERFORMANCE VIDEO (1:13)
JIN RECORDING "SUPER TUNA" | CLIP - 'SEA OF JIN ISLAND' PRODUCTION FILM (1:46)
"SUPER TUNA" | LYRICS (1:09)
"SUPER TUNA" | ANIMATED FMV - ULSIART (1:00)
JIN REACTING TO "SUPER TUNA" 🐟🐟 (2:43)
BONUS: 211204 JIN'S BIRTHDAY! 🎂 & "SUPER TUNA" 🐟 SHOWCASE | VLIVE (40:06)
"SUPER TUNA" (EXTENDED VER) | OUT NOW ANNOUNCEMENT (1:01)
"SUPER TUNA" (EXTENDED VER) | SPECIAL VIDEO (2:11 - as shown above)
"SUPER TUNA" (EXTENDED VER) | LYRICS (1:52)
EPISODE: JIN "SUPER TUNA" SPECIAL VIDEO SHOOT SKETCH (6:12 - as shown below)
JIN REACTION WHEN LEE MUJIN TRY TO SING "SUPER TUNA" | CLIP LEE MUJIN'S SERVICE (0:57)
"SUPER TUNA" (EXTENDED VER) PERFORMANCE | 2024 FESTA (1:57)
"SUPER TUNA" (EXTENDED VER) PERFORMANCE | HAPPY SPECIAL STAGE (2:22)
BONUS: 241010 JIMIN, HAPPY BIRTHDAY (+"SUPER TUNA" 🐟) | WE-LIVE (30:54)

Fun Fact

Jin on “Half-Star Hotel in Lost Island”.

The King of Variety Shows strikes again. In August, Jin appeared, along with his friend Sandeul (from the group B1A4), on the show “Half-Star Hotel in Lost Island”.

The premise, you probably guessed it, centers around guests coming to stay at/run a 0.5 Star hotel on an island, and what happens as they try to navigate that.

There is PEAK JIN throughout his entire appearance on the show, including more lies about fishing and trying to play pranks and cheat the system. You know, the usual.

DAY FOUR:

Over the course of their career, BTS has been a part of many paid partnerships and brand ambassadorships. We’ve seen the members do commercials for a lot of different types of products, and we’ve seen them model for a few different clothing brands including PUMA, Fila, and Louis Vuitton.

During the past couple of years, we saw some of the members also pursue solo brand ambassadorships. Jung Kook signed with Calvin Klein, Jimin with Dior, RM with Bottega Veneta, V with Celine, and SUGA with Valentino (just to name a few). ARMY found ourselves wondering if Jin would pursue any partnerships once he was discharged, and if so, what brands did we think were likely to make an offer.

Our answer should have been “all of them”. At least, it felt that way. Within mere HOURS of his discharge, there were “Welcome Home” gifts waiting for him at HYBE (possibly from several brands, but we only know of one for sure) that included a HUGE cake from Gucci. Seokjin was officially being courted.

And it didn’t take long for Jin to begin announcing new a brand partnerships, and to no one’s surprise… there have been many. First up was FRED, a French jewelry house, followed quickly by Gucci, skincare brand LANEIGE, and most recently yoga/athleisure brand ALO. And thus he embarked on a mission to destroy ARMY more and more with each photo drop and each behind the scenes video released.

Jin was also tapped to be the face of the “Feel Soul Good” tourism campaign for Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Jin filmed several promo videos for this, looking dashing in each one of them. Pretty sure this was all unnecessary though. They probably could have saved a lot of money and just filmed a video of a smiling Jin giving finger hearts and saying, “You should come visit Seoul”, and South Korea would still experience a sudden influx in tourism.

Fun Fact:

JIn is a “Handsome Guy”. Duh.

Continuing down the variety show line, just this month Jin has appeared as the first guest on the premiere episode of a show called “Handsome Guys”.

It’s an outdoor adventure show where the cast travels across South Korea to explore its culture, landmarks, and people. The other cast members are Cha Tae Hyun, Lee Yi Kyung, Kim Dong Hyun, Oh Sanguk, and Shin Seung Ho.

Jin’s episode was filmed in Busan and involved a “chaotic adventure”, full of running around (coincidentally, Jin was introduced with his song “Running Wild”), randomly being quizzed, and sleeping on mats in a planetarium.

DAY FIVE:

Did you, like myself, and many other ARMYs around the world, find yourself hoping that once Jin was back from the military, he would go LIVE on Weverse, like, all the time—just to hang out with us whenever?

In the project, we often discussed what our hopes were, what we’d love to see from Jin once he was back, and Weverse livestreams were always widely mentioned. Thinking back to the long, epic streams he used to do with us while gaming, many of us wished for more of that upon his return. And of course we all wanted to see some more “Eat Jin” content.

Jin has only gone LIVE a handful of times since his return, but each time has been so crazy and unpredictable, so who cares? We’ve gotten our gaming lives, complete with Jin trying valiantly (and definitely NOT always succeeding) to not swear when he gets frustrated, and also with him making the kind of noises you usually only hear on videos you listen to when you’re wearing headphones.

He also celebrated Jimin’s birthday for all of five minutes before throwing all of his birthday paraphenalia offscreen and revealing the true reason for his LIVE—shameless self-promotion of his new version of “Super Tuna”.

We can only hope that Jin chooses to go LIVE more next year as well, even if just for a few minutes to say “Hi” to ARMY. He always brings the laughs, and knows just what to do to make us happy, which we know makes him happy too.

240612 D-DAY (DELETED) 1/3 | WE-LIVE (0:25)
240612 D-DAY (DELETED) 2/3 | WE-LIVE (0:35)
240612 D-DAY 3/3 | WE-LIVE (19:27 - as shown)
240715 SEOKJINNIE | WE-LIVE (1:08:34)
240921 HELLO IT'S JIN | WE-LIVE (1:57:30)
241010 JIMIN, HAPPY BIRTHDAY (+SUPER TUNA 🐟) | WE-LIVE (30:54)
241121 SEOKJIN CAME TO NEW YORK | WE-LIVE (1:13:46)

Bangtan Bubble: What’s your favorite moment from Jin’s recent Weverse LIVEs?

Let us know your answer in the comments below or on social media (include #BangtanBubble)!

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Jin has said he thought a lot about ARMY and what we mean to him while he was serving his time in the military. I think he was looking forward to jumping into “action” for us the moment he returned, not just because he was itching to get back to work, but because he wanted to show us his love and gratitude for how much we stuck by him and BTS during this time of enlistment and hiatus.

Next week, we’ll see Jin “Running Wild” and learning more and more about himself as he releases his first solo album and continues along in his quest to be HAPPY…

Side Quest

Jin is PRETTY. Let’s look at him.

As we’ve seen this week, Jin wasted no time getting right to work after being discharged from the military. Not only was he booked and busy filming shows and upcoming music projects (ahem), but it seemed like every single magazine in the world came knocking on his door as well.

Remember all those brand ambassadorships we talked about? Yeah, some of those came with campaigns in magazines as well. Gucci, FRED, LANEIGE, etc… Jin’s been everywhere. And it’s been devastating.

Our side quest this week brings you all of the magazine spreads Jin has been a part of within the past six months. Check them out… at you own risk. You’ve been warned.

CREDITS:

YouTube/Web

BANGTANTV, AND SPRITE, BANGTAN_BULLETIN, BANGTANCUTIE23, BTS LIVE ARCHIVE, BTS MVP, BTS21LOVER, E! News, ENJOY BTS MORE, ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT, Fanirik, FRED JEWELRY, GUCCI, HARPER'S BAZAAR KOREA, Hee-young, IG @jin, KOOKIEES, KOREA DISPATCH, KPOP_LOVER, LANEIGE US, MBC WORLD, NTV, OK_KOOKIE, 𝐏𝐀𝐊_𝐁𝐓𝐒, PURPLE FAMILY, TAEBEAR MD, thebangtancollector, TODAY'S NEWS, TONG TONG, TWITTER @minnano_zoo_ntv, TWITTER @thejinfantry, ULSI, US BTS ARMY, Video Hi Hi, VISIT SEOUL - TV, W KOREA, 동지섣달꽃본듯이날좀보소, 디글 :Diggle, 엠빅뉴스; Web:

ARMY Project 529 Volunteers

Research Team: Angel (TikTok: Lilangel2828), Leslie Day (TikTok: Leslie Day), Merry (TikTok: merryj67), Sam T (TikTok: samt_26), Shelley (TikTok: shels167), Trudy (TikTok: theeducationmommy), Viv (TikTok: VivEliz); Video Team: Leslie Day (TikTok: Leslie Day), Namz (TikTok: Namz07)

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