BTS Lima Concert Review: Arirang Tour, 151,500 Fans
On Saturday night in Lima, Estadio San Marcos sang "Happy Birthday" to Jimin during his closing remarks, three days before the day itself. There was no birthday segment on the program. The crowd supplied one.
This review is based on agency statements and press accounts of BTS's three Lima concerts on Oct. 7, 9 and 10, not on attendance. Setlist details come from earlier stops on the Arirang tour where noted.
My overall assessment is that the Lima run shows BTS can make a three-night stadium stand feel addressed to its city, because the group tailors outfits, greetings and one song slot to each stop, even though nearly everything else on the bill is fixed. Big Hit Music said about 151,500 fans attended the three sold-out shows in the group's first visit to Peru. A third date was added after demand for the original two.
What is fixed is most of the show. At the tour opener in Goyang on April 9, BTS started with "Hooligan" and ended the main set with "IDOL," according to setlist.fm. Peruvian outlets projected the Lima list from the Bogotá shows. The open slot is a "random song" corner, where the group performs a different song each night. Tokyo got "Crystal Snow" and "FOR YOU." Busan got "Paldogangsan" and "Ma City," Big Hit said. Coverage I reviewed did not name Lima's picks, which is the largest gap in judging whether that slot worked here.
The local touches are better documented. The members wore cowboy hats in Mexico and used local keyrings and dolls in Toronto. On Oct. 9 in Lima, their outfits displayed their real names and messages for ARMY to mark the 100th anniversary of Hangul Day, per Big Hit. That one earns its place because it tied a Korean anniversary to a Peruvian crowd on the day itself. The Spanish worked the same way: the members said "Los amo" repeatedly and told the crowd the stadium's energy made them wonder why they had not come sooner, the Korea Herald reported.
Outfit messages and greetings are details that photograph well and cost the production little. They show attention. They do not change the shape of the night.
The clearest miss is Jimin's birthday. Fans built the celebration across the city, with digital billboards, street banners, LED trucks and a drone show that spelled his name in the sky above a message reading "We'll always be with you." Nothing official on stage matched it, the Herald reported. For a group that matches outfits to cities, skipping a member's birthday weekend stands out. Jimin answered the crowd's singing at the final show by saying he would "always remember" the love sent "from the other side of the world."
There was also friction off stage. RM's Thursday Weverse post asking fans to stop gathering outside the group's hotel drew criticism for naming Latin America. On Friday he said it was not aimed at Peru or any country, pointing to similar episodes in Europe and the United States and to drones over hotel rooms and lasers. The clarification arrived in the middle of a run built on "Los amo," and it sat awkwardly there.
Press accounts cannot tell me how the 360-degree central stage sounded from the upper stands, whether the sing-alongs covered the vocals, or how the Lima set was paced. Those are the things a review should answer, and this one cannot.
On the numbers around the shows, Peru's tourism ministry projected $18.7 million in tourism-related activity, while the Lima Chamber of Commerce estimated up to 200 million soles, about $58.4 million, across a wider range of spending.
Santiago is the next test on Oct. 14, 16 and 17, after Chile approved Estadio Nacional on July 21 on a revised plan to protect the pitch. If the random corner and the outfits there are as specific as Tokyo's and Busan's, the Lima touches will look like a method. If not, they will look like a pattern of gestures.
Arirang is out now on BigHit Music. The Arirang world tour continues in Santiago on Oct. 14, 16 and 17, followed by Buenos Aires and São Paulo.
