BTS, one of the world’s most successful and recognizable musical groups, have made their long-awaited return to performing and recording with the album “Arirang,” which has a surprising connection to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The title is an allusion to Korea’s most famous traditional folksong, and the group was inspired by the first wax cylinder recordings of the song, which are right here in the AFC’s vast archive of traditional music.
BTS, of course, is a leading group in the genre of K-pop, which many Americans were introduced to for the first time in the past year. In particular, the animated film “KPop Demon Hunters” made K-pop a household word by winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and winning both an Academy Award and a Grammy Award for its song “Golden.” For others of our readers, K-pop may have been a foundational part of your youth; maybe you’ve been following your “bias” since they were still in their trainee days. (For the uninitiated, that’s an in-group term for a fan’s favorite member in a K-pop idol group!) No matter where you fall in K-Pop fandom, it’s undeniable that the Korean Wave, or hallyu, has reached a new height in the U.S.
Most recently, global audiences are buzzing about the return of BTS after a hiatus for the group’s members to complete their mandatory military service, an 18-month prerequisite for all men in South Korea between the ages of 18 and 35. On March 13th, BTS dropped an animated trailer for their new album, Arirang, featuring all seven members reimagined in the role of seven young Korean students on the Howard University campus in Washington, DC. In a journey through time, the animated members of BTS are taken back to 1896 after listening to wax cylinders on a phonograph. This recording technology, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877, was used to create the earliest field recordings in the American Folklife Center’s collections.
More specifically, the original cylinders BTS are listening to in their trailer form part of the American Folklife Center’s Alice C. Fletcher collection of Korean cylinder recordings (AFC 1948/079).
In their teaser video, BTS describes this history:
“This video was inspired by the story of seven young Koreans as documented in The Washington Post on May 8, 1896 (“Seven Koreans at Howard”), some of whom captured the first known audio recordings of Koreans in Washington, D.C., on July 24 of that same year.
As a modern reimagining, this work draws upon the profound cultural significance of these historical records, which preserve the authentic voices of young Korean men and the first-ever recording of ‘Arirang.’”
These cylinders are historic for many reasons, the first and foremost being that they contain the first ever recordings of Korean music and Korean singing voices in the world. How these cylinders came to be, and their connection to the Library, is quite an interesting story. In a previous blog post, I alluded to the exciting tale of the students’ travels that led them to the U.S. and the cylinders’ connection to the Library’s physical location, as they were recorded on what is now the site of the Library’s Madison building. In 2009, Dr. Rob Provine, Professor Emeritus of the University of Maryland, College Park, School of Music, also gave an hour long lecture at the Library on the full history of the students’ recording session with Alice Fletcher and the historical context that led them to D.C. Read the blog, and view the lecture, here.
Alice Cunningham Fletcher, anthropologist and ethnologist, is most known for her work with Native American groups and her early field recordings of Native American culture. However, found within her vast recording collection was a small group of rare and invaluable recordings of traditional Korean music, which she made on July 24, 1896. As noted, these cylinders contain the earliest known recordings of Korean music in the world and predate the next documented recording of Korean song by 11 years. Specifically, they contain songs sung by Korean students whose names are often transliterated today as Jeong-sik Ahn, He Chel Ye and Son Rong. In this collection are three renditions of Arirang, one of which is just a ten second clip with what may have been a false start. This type of “blooper” gives great insight into what the challenges of early recording technology may have brought to ethnographers as, unlike current digital media, they cannot be easily erased and recorded over!
The BTS album’s title, “Arirang,” is the name of the most famous traditional Korean folk song, which has developed thousands of variations throughout its 600-year history. A song that has grown in national importance for both North and South Korea, it symbolizes unity and longing in both countries. The song “Arirang” was inscribed in 2012 on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity for the Republic of Korea, and again in 2014 for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “Arirang” has also become a shorthand term for folk music, and for cultural heritage in general, with annual events like the Seoul Arirang Festival presenting a wide range of Korean arts and heritage under the umbrella term “Arirang.” Even South Korea’s foremost radio and TV networks aimed at the Western market are known as Arirang Radio and Arirang TV, with programming largely in English.
Listen here to the three recordings of the song “Arirang” from our collection, and see if you can hear any potential influences the folk song may have had on BTS’ new album (hint: start with their new song Body to Body):
If you’re interested in learning more about K-pop, Korean culture, or Asian American traditions in the U.S. more generally, visit our research guides highlighting these topics throughout the Library’s collections:
American Folklife Center Collections: Korea
Similarly inspired by recent depictions of K-pop in media, Lora Taylor, a 2025-2026 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the Library of Congress, wrote a blog on looking for historical media throughout the Library that may give insight to the history and inspiration for current K-pop aesthetics.
If you’re similarly inspired to use your own cultural heritage or folk traditions to create new artforms, we highly recommend taking part in the AFC’s Archive Challenge. Get inspired by historic recordings, just like BTS, and maybe even make a global chart-topper too! It wouldn’t be the first time… Learn more here: https://guides.loc.gov/folklife-archive-challenge-kit