When they seriously considered disbanding: BTS and the 2018 MAMA speech

Looking back at 2018 today, it's hard to imagine that was exactly when BTS seriously questioned whether they'd continue as a group. From the outside, it looked like the complete opposite. They were breaking records, topping American charts, heading into a world tour, and performing for crowds that kept growing month after month. It was a year when their success spread far beyond South Korea.

And then, on December 14, at the Mnet Asian Music Awards in Hong Kong, Jin said something almost nobody expected.

BTS won Artist of the Year that night. The members were already visibly emotional walking on stage. j-hope cried during the acceptance speech, and the emotion soon overtook the others too. When it was Jin's turn, he explained why the award meant so much to them.

Earlier that same year, he said, things had been mentally very hard for them. They'd talked among themselves and even considered disbanding the group. In the end, they found their strength again and decided to keep going, and Jin thanked the members for staying together.

For a lot of fans, that one sentence completely changed the picture of the year that was about to end.

Because 2018 hadn't looked like the year of a group questioning its future. In May, Love Yourself: Tear came out and became the first album by a Korean artist to hit number one on the Billboard 200. Fake Love landed in the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100. A few months later, Love Yourself: Answer reached number one on Billboard's albums chart again.

In August, they set out on the Love Yourself tour. It opened with two shows at Seoul's Olympic Stadium, then continued through the United States, Canada, and Europe. By November, they were already performing at the Tokyo Dome and other major Japanese venues. What looked to audiences like an unbelievable string of successes meant, at the same time, almost nonstop work for them.

It wasn't until years later that the members spoke more openly about how much that period wore them down.

In a 2023 conversation with SUGA, Jin looked back on 2018 and the Fake Love promotions again. They talked about months with extremely little time to rest, sometimes just one day off a month. Jin explained how physically and mentally hard that pace had been on them. SUGA agreed it had been an especially grueling period.

That gives a lot more context to what Jin said at MAMA.

There's no single big fight, one incident, or one specific event we can point to as the reason BTS considered disbanding. The members themselves have talked about exhaustion, pressure, and a pace that got harder and harder to sustain. Their career was growing at an unbelievable rate, and with that success came bigger and bigger schedules and expectations.

That same year, another moment happened that sounds especially interesting in hindsight.

In September, RM stood in front of the United Nations in New York and, as part of a UNICEF campaign, spoke about accepting yourself and finding your own voice. He also talked about his own mistakes, fears, and insecurities, and urged young people to tell their own story. At that point, the public still had no idea what had been happening inside the group a few months earlier.

In October came even more concrete confirmation that BTS planned to continue together. All seven members renewed their contracts with Big Hit Entertainment, even though their existing contracts weren't close to ending yet. The new contracts were signed for seven years, after conversations between the members and the company.

So between the difficult conversations early in the year and Jin's admission in December, a very clear decision about their shared future had already been made.

That's exactly what made the MAMA speech so striking. Fans had spent the whole year watching BTS win awards, fill bigger and bigger venues, and hit milestones no Korean act before them had reached. Nobody outside their close circle knew that, behind all of it, there'd also been a conversation about whether they could, and wanted to, keep going like that.

BTS didn't have to share any of it with the audience. They could have thanked ARMY, the company, and the people they work with, taken the award, and walked off stage. Instead, Jin decided to say what had actually been happening.

It had been hard for them. They'd considered disbanding. They talked, and decided to stay together.

Today we know how much happened after that night. Map of the Soul came next, then Wembley and the Speak Yourself stadium tour. Grammy performances and nominations followed, along with Dynamite and Butter, a stretch of solo projects, military service, and a new shared chapter.

But in December 2018, none of that had been written yet.

That's exactly why the speech still holds a special place in BTS history today. It showed just how little audiences sometimes know about what's happening behind the big tours, awards, and records. A year that looked from the outside like their biggest success yet was, for the members themselves, a lot more complicated.

In the end, they decided to keep going together. Everything that came after happened because they made that decision then.