As a librarian, as a folklorist, as a writer of folk tales, and as ARMY, this moment reaches far deeper than fandom. It touches the part of me that understands how culture survives; how stories of ordinary people make the fabric of sovereignty and nationhood.
Arirang comes from folk tradition. It is not a song you own. It is a song you carry. It is a story you offer.
It has no single author. It belongs to farmers and migrants, to those who labored and waited, to people who crossed mountains and borders with grief in their pockets and hope folded carefully into song. Arirang has always been sung at thresholds, when leaving, when returning, when words are not enough.
So when BTS name their comeback album, Arirang, this is not nostalgia. This is not branding. This is not a trend.
This is inheritance. This is heritage. A cultural artifact brought back to consciousness.
BTS is not saying we are back. They are saying we endured. They are saying we crossed. They are saying we remember who we are and where we come from.
And then, ARMYrang.
That word undid me.
In folk traditions, the refrain of song and story exists so others can join in. The song lives because someone answers back. To be named inside a song and story is to be acknowledged as part of its survival.
ARMYrang is not a term of endearment. By using folk literature, BTS is addressing us as kin and community.
BTS says: you are not the audience. You are not just a market. You are not merely a number. You are part of the refrain.
As a librarian, I know this as second skin: for culture to survive it needs to be remembered and to be lived. Because someone must keep on singing, retelling, passing it on with care.
As a folklorist, I know what it means to step into collective authorship; to speak with humility, to carry a story without flattening it, to trust the people who receive it to hold it well.
As ARMY, I know what it has meant to wait. As a mother, I learned how to hold joy and sorrow together. Being a woman, I know how to sing quietly when shouting would break us.
And now, ARMYrang. It feels like love eternal not because it promises forever but because it promises continuance.
Eternity, in folk culture, is not endless time. It is unbroken transmission.
A song passed hand to hand. A name spoken with care. A people who show up, again and again, to sing. To tell stories.
This comeback does not ask us to scream. It asks us to listen.
It does not demand attention. It asks for reverence.
Putang ina. Paiiyakin tayo ng Bangtan.
Not because this is dramatic. But because this is true.
This is what it looks like when artists return not as products, but as people. And when they call their listeners not fans, but kin.
I am still gathering my wits. Really.
I think I will be for a while.
But I know this much: To be ARMY in this moment, to be called ARMYrang, is to stand inside a very old song, to be held, and to belong there.
Apobangpo! Purple and true! 
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