May 29 • General discussion
BTS Made an Album About Howard and Forgot to Include Black People. That's K-Pop's Pattern.
In March 2026, BTS dropped an animated teaser for their album “Arirang” — inspired by seven Korean students who attended Howard University in 1896. The concept: racial solidarity across cultures, honoring the legacy of HBCUs. Beautiful idea on paper.
The teaser had no Black people in it. At Howard. The university built by and for Black Americans.
They apologized. Fine. But let’s be clear about what happened: a group used a Black institution as inspiration, leaned on its cultural weight, and in the first execution — forgot the people who made that institution what it is. That’s not a coincidence, it’s a pattern. The K-pop industry has spent decades doing exactly this. Take the aesthetic, the sound, the cultural gravity. Credit and representation? Optional.
Real appreciation doesn’t mean adding Black faces after the backlash hits. It means Black people are in the room when decisions get made — not just in the product you’re selling. BTS puts in more work than most K-pop acts to understand Black American culture. Credit where it’s due. But even the artists who try hardest still operate inside a machine that profits off Blackness without a structural commitment to Black people.
Discussion: If an album genuinely inspired by HBCU history and Black-Korean solidarity can still produce a teaser with no Black faces — what does that tell us about the gap between intention and execution in this industry?
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BTS Made an Album About Howard and Forgot to Include Black People. That's K-Pop's Pattern.
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