Hi there! We're kicking off a series where we tell you about the most important things that happened in K-pop each week. Let's get into it!
1. Exo's Chen announced he's getting married *and* that he and his fiancé are expecting their first child (squee)!
2. Monsta X announced the North American leg of their world tour with a whopping 17 stops in the US and Canada.
3. Meanwhile, the demand for tickets for Ateez's World Tour: The Fellowship: Map The Treasure was so intense that they had to release additional tickets.
4. Connect, BTS, the K-pop supergroup's global art project, kicked off to a tremendous start in London (and a day later, Berlin), featuring world-renowned artists and curators *and* a livestream from the superstars themselves.
5. Sound the alarms! On Friday morning, BTS released their new single, "Black Swan" — mind you, a full month before their album, Map of the Soul: 7 drops.
View this video on YouTube
The single was released alongside a five-and-a-half minute art film performed by Slovenian modern dance troupe MN Dance Company. The film kicks off with a quote by Martha Graham: "A dancer dies twice — once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful."
BTS themselves will be performing the song for the first time on The Late Late Show with James Corden on Jan. 28!
In other Map of the Soul: 7 news, the album also broke their record for stock pre-orders for Map of the Soul: 7 with — wait for it — 3.42 million pre-orders from Jan. 9 (the day pre-orders started) to 15!