The biggest name in K-pop is back.On Friday, the boy band and global juggernaut BTS released its first album of new music since the pandemic. On Saturday, the group performed live in central Seoul, the South Korean capital. It was their first concert in three years, five months and six days, as obsessive fans point out.The show at Gwanghwamun Square started at 8pm in Seoul, or 7am in New York, and ended promptly an hour later. It was heavy on the group’s new album, Arirang, but also included performances of old hits like Butter, Mic Drop and Dynamite. They wrapped up with Mikrokosmos, a track from 2019.In a way, it was a grand homecoming for a pivotal force of South Korea’s soft power. The show was unusual in one sense: RM, the band’s leader, had injured his ankle and was not fully enmeshed in the ensemble. For example, during a rendition of 2.0, a new track, he sat on a stool while the other six BTS members moved through slick dance moves.The show was streamed live by Netflix – a testament to the band’s global reach and popularity. The group’s 82-date global tour is further evidence of that appeal and also its financial heft. By some estimates the tour could rival or even surpass the $2 billion (€1.73 billion) in gross ticket sales from Taylor Swift’s Eras outing.About 22,000 fans had tickets for the concert. The authorities expected more than a quarter of a million people to congregate in and around the square. But halfway through the show, crowd-tracking data from the Seoul government showed that there were only about 60,000 people in the area.Fans without tickets crowd the side streets in hope of catching a glimpse of BTS in Seoul, South Korea, on Saturday. Photograph: Jun Michael Park/The New York Times