Jin emphasises loyalty to BTS, reflects on solo path: 'I missed them so much; no reason to continue without them'
Any lingering idea that BTS's eldest member Jin might have felt sidelined during the making of ARIRANG begins to fall apart the moment you hear him speak.
By the time Jin returned, fresh off his solo tour and military service, the creative engine behind the album had already been running at full speed in LA. More than a hundred songs had been written. For some artists, that might have triggered frustration, even resentment at missing out on the ideation stage. Jin doesn’t deny a flicker of that feeling. “I’m a little bummed,” he told Rolling Stone, in a recent interview. Till now, there had been much speculation and dissection about this particular feeling, with many different fandoms interpreting his reservations as 'fury' and 'anger' at the band. Fans had been sharing videos of him allegedly looking 'annoyed', after the release of the Arirang album.
However, he reframed the moment not as a loss, but as a choice, where he prioritised the group over self. “There’s more to life than just the present. There’s the future,” he says, grounding himself in a longer arc. And then, in a line that dismantles any narrative of ego, he added that pushing for his own contributions could have delayed the project, something he simply wasn’t willing to risk. He asked: Wouldn’t fans have been left waiting too long?
That instinct, to think first of the group, and of the fans, has been a throughline in Jin’s journey. He was the first among BTS to enlist, stepping away at a time when the band was at a global peak. Even then, his focus extended outward. During his service as an assistant drill sergeant, he became known for small, human gestures, buying extra food for his troops. And his commitment to ARMY remained resolute: Every month, they received a pre-recorded video from him, that he had shot before he left for military service.
And for Jin, that centre has always been the group.
“I just missed the other members so much,” he said.. “I’ve always thought there’s no reason to continue if it’s not with the group.”
What about a solo career? It is just not that important” to him. If anything, his creative curiosity exists within the framework of BTS, trying new things, but together, and always with an eye on what the fans might need in that moment.
Seen through that lens, his absence during the early stages of ARIRANG stops looking like a gap, and starts to look like a kind of trust. Trust in his bandmates to carry the vision forward. Trust in timing. And perhaps most of all, trust that what he values most isn’t a writing credit or creative control, but the chance to return, stand alongside them again, and build something that feels shared.
It’s not that Jin didn’t miss out. It’s that, to him, missing out was never the point.
