SEOUL — BTS returned to the stage on March 21 at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul after almost four years away for mandatory military service. The group's first comeback concert offered 22,000 free tickets, and city officials estimated the crowd would grow to hundreds of thousands.

More than 18.4 million viewers tuned in for the Netflix livestream of the performance. Authorities deployed more than 10,000 state personnel for security, logistics and crowd control, and close to 130 million won of city funds were spent on logistics for the event, according to Seoul government disclosure.

Inbound tourist numbers for the first 18 days of March rose 32.7 percent from the previous month, according to Ministry of Justice data. Hotel prices in central Seoul increased as demand for rooms climbed before the concert. Shekinah Yawra, a 32-year-old Filipino fan, spent the night at a 24-hour bathhouse in Seoul after hotels near central Seoul sold out in late March. "We all came just for this," Yawra said.

More than half of the crowd at the comeback event were foreign visitors, many of whom traveled long distances to attend, according to a sample study by the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute. "In Europe and the United States, travel tends to be concentrated within its own regions," KCTI researcher Yang Ji-hoon said. "So, for people to overcome such travel barriers and come to South Korea, it usually requires more than just ordinary motivation or typical spending – it's not something that happens easily," he added. "As the industries expand in scale, they must also evolve in its underlying systems, infrastructure, and workforce," Yang said. "Rather than focusing solely on direct financial support, future governmental policies should move toward strengthening foundational conditions – such as improving labour environments, addressing unfair practices, building relevant infrastructure, and establishing more robust statistical and data systems," he said.

In the week leading up to the concert, sales of BTS merchandise at the Shinsegae Duty Free retail outlet increased 430 percent, the company said. Over the concert weekend, revenues rose 30 percent at Lotte Department Store and 48 percent at Shinsegae overall compared with the same weekend in March 2024, the companies said. In 2022, KCTI estimated that a single BTS concert in Seoul could generate up to 1.2 trillion won in economic impact.

In late March, BTS's 10th studio album Arirang topped the charts in the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom. The group's upcoming world tour is expected to generate more than $1.4 billion in revenue across more than 80 shows in 23 countries. BTS has an estimated 30 million fans worldwide, who refer to themselves as the BTS ARMY.

BTS was estimated to have generated $4.65 billion annually for South Korea's economy as its members approached mandatory military service age. The government set a record budget of 9.6 trillion won to bolster K-content, support the arts sector and strengthen culture-related fields. South Korea ranks 11th globally in soft power, according to Brand Finance's Global Soft Power Index.