Bogotá Has Finally Met BTS: Two Nights to Remember

BTS performed in Colombia for the first time on October 2 and 3, and two sold-out nights at El Campín stadium brought a few lovely surprises. New outfits, four surprise songs, plenty of Spanish, and an old “Run BTS!” joke that finally made it to the country whose name it carries all marked the start of the South American leg of the ARIRANG tour.

Both nights were sold out, and according to the city government of Bogotá, more than 53,000 people were expected at the stadium each night. Colombian ARMY showed right away how well they know BTS, not only through the popular hits but also through the Korean lyrics, the fan chants, and songs from the group's earliest days.

The first change was visible the moment the members walked onto the stage. Bogotá got new outfits to open the show. Instead of the darker, heavier looks worn on earlier stops of the tour, BTS appeared in new combinations in light and white tones.

The concert opened once again with “Hooligan,” after which the familiar ARIRANG setlist rolled on. The stage had to be adapted a little differently to El Campín, so it didn't have the diagonal screens seen at some earlier shows, but the big screens, moving stage sections, pyrotechnics, and the production that comes with the tour were all still there.

The atmosphere was one of the main stories from Bogotá from the very first night. The crowd sang almost without stopping, and the Korean parts of the songs and the fan chants were especially loud. The members reacted to the volume of the stadium several times, and during the closing talk j-hope even asked why it had taken them so long to come to Colombia.

Even more attention went to their attempts to talk to the audience in Spanish.

V said he's studying Spanish but isn't good enough yet, and asked the crowd: “Ayúdame, parce.” In translation, “Help me, friend,” except that “parce” is not a random word choice. It's a distinctly Colombian, informal word for a friend or buddy.

He then tried a few more local expressions. He said Bogotá was “bacano,” meaning great, and then added “qué chimba,” a very Colombian expression of delight that could be rendered as something like “so awesome.”

The crowd greeted every new attempt with enthusiasm, and V promised to learn even more Spanish by the next visit. Jin got his own moment with “¡Hágale pues!”, another expression typical of Colombia that, depending on the situation, can mean something like “let's go,” “sure,” or “go ahead then.”

One moment from the first night actually began more than seven years ago.

In episode 71 of “Run BTS!”, filmed in Toronto in 2019, a question about the capital of Colombia came up during a game. That's where “Assarabia Colombia” was heard, a phrase ARMY has long remembered.

The phrase itself doesn't have any special meaning connected to Colombia. “Assarabia” is an old Korean playful exclamation of joy, something like “yay!” or “woohoo!”, while “Colombia” goes with it for the rhythm and the rhyme. That's exactly why it has stayed around for years as a small inside joke.

Colombian ARMY knew exactly what to do when BTS finally arrived in Bogotá.

Banners reading “Assarabia Colombia” appeared at the concert, fans started chanting the phrase, and the members played along. V and j-hope sang it and danced along to it in front of the crowd. Something that was a few seconds of fun in “Run BTS!” in 2019 was shouted seven years later by an entire stadium in Colombia.

The first night also brought the first two surprise songs.

After “Dynamite” came “I'm Fine,” and right after it “So What.” Both songs were released in 2018, and “So What” suits especially well the more relaxed part of a BTS concert where the line between stage and audience almost disappears.

The second night brought a completely different combination.

The first surprise song was “We Are Bulletproof Pt.2” from the debut release 2 Cool 4 Skool in 2013. The crowd sang from the first beat, along with the fan chants that have accompanied that song since BTS's beginnings.

In the recordings you can especially hear the moment when Jungkook begins his part with the words “ireumeun Jung Kook,” which simply means “my name is Jungkook.”

The rest of the line includes a little wordplay. Jungkook's Korean name, Jeongguk, sounds very similar to the word jeonguk, which means the whole country or nationwide. The meaning of the start of his rap is therefore roughly: “My name is Jungkook, my reach is the whole country.”

The stadium said that part along with him.

The moment is even lovelier when you know that Jungkook was only 15 when the song was recorded, and the line he introduced himself with then was now sung along with him by a whole sold-out stadium at BTS's first concerts in Colombia.

After one of their earliest songs came “Mikrokosmos.”

ARMY Bombs filled the stadium with light, and the combination of the two songs took the second night from the very beginnings of BTS to a song that has been one of their recognizable concert moments for years.

Bogotá thus got four surprise songs. On the first night they were “I'm Fine” and “So What,” and on the second “We Are Bulletproof Pt.2” and “Mikrokosmos.”

Their stay in Bogotá also had a less pleasant side. After they arrived, information about their location started to be shared, fans waited for them at the airport, and a local outlet even reported from near the hotel where they were staying. Colombian ARMY fan clubs publicly asked for their locations not to be shared and for people not to go to the hotel or the airport.

A claim also appeared on social media that they had to change hotels because of this, but there is no reliable confirmation of it. No serious security problems were reported during the concerts themselves, and no details about their departure from Colombia were made public after the second night.

Maybe that's for the best.

The most important part of Bogotá still happened on the stage. The two nights brought plenty of moments that will stay tied to this stop of the tour, from the new outfits and four surprise songs to the Spanish, “Assarabia Colombia,” and fan chants from BTS's beginnings that rang out just as loudly for a song from 2013.

During the closing talks, the members spoke about how surprised they were by the energy of the crowd and mentioned coming back more than once. V has already promised to arrive with better Spanish next time.

After two sold-out nights, it seems the first meeting between BTS and Colombian ARMY went exactly the way anyone could have hoped. Bogotá finally got its BTS concerts, and BTS got a very good reason to return.