An hour before K-pop star Jin took the stage at Honda Center on Thursday, fans outside the Anaheim arena crackled with excitement, not just for the U.S. debut of Jin’s first-ever solo tour, but also recent news that K-pop superstars BTS are set for a comeback.
“I was excited, obviously,” said Aubriana Stover of Jurupa Valley of the announcement several weeks ago that all seven members of BTS have now finished their mandatory South Korean military service, which took members of the group out of circulation from December 2022 to June 2025, and are planning a reunion for early 2026.
She’d just met Jazmine Adams and Zaidee Sanchez, best friends from San Diego, and in the way members of the BTS fandom known as Army often do, they had already bonded over their love for the band.
“I felt like I was becoming a fan all over again,” Adams said of the news. “Just the excitement and knowing that there was going to be a community coming back together again.”
Were there tears and overwhelming joy at the news of BTS’s return? Oh yeah, Sanchez and the others said.
“Think of Michael Jackson at his prime – that times 10,” Stover said.
“Or how everyone was passing out (at Jackson shows then),” Adams said. “That’s the feeling I got.”
Valeria Altamirano of Tucson joined the group of young women. She and Sanchez met through online BTS fandom and met in real life on Thursday for Jin’s first of two shows at Honda Center.
“I’d say it felt like I was 12 years old again,” Altamirano said. “Like I was just a little kid, discovering them all over again.”
We lost track of our new BTS pals as showtime neared, but it’s the safest of bets to say their delight continued throughout the hour and 55 minutes of Jin’s performance, the third solo tour after Suga in 2023 and J-Hope earlier this year.
The #RunSeokJin_Ep.Tour takes its name from Jin’s full name, Kim Seok-jin, and “Run Jin,” the web variety series that Jin debuted a year ago after concluding his military service. Over 36 episodes, Jin and friends played games, did challenges, and had as much fun as possible. The tour seeks to recreate much of that playful attitude.
“Running Wild” kicked off the show with Jin dressed in a sparkling denim-colored jacket and pants by Gucci, for which he is a global brand ambassador, singing the soaring pop anthem as he skipped and danced through confetti and blasts of pyrotechnics.
“I’ll Be There” followed as the packed arena glowed with the synchronized flashing lights of “bombs,” the name given to the orb-like light sticks fans bring to BTS-affiliated shows.
Most of the songs featured a mix of Korean and English lyrics, though the tilt toward English now seems slightly more than it was on earlier BTS records. Musically, Jin’s solo records, including the EP “Echo,” released in May, and the EP “Happy,” released in November, shift from pop ballads to synth-pop, dance rock to rock anthems.
After “Falling,” a romantic ballad, a close-up of Jin’s face filled the video screens on stage as he slowly raised his fingers to his full lips and blew the crowd a kiss, eliciting screams so loud the decibel-checking app on my Apple Watch handed in its resignation.
Telepathy Game, the first of several audience-participation challenges, featured Jin trying to guess a secret word or phrase acted out by audience members, with the number of correct answers determining what outfit he’d change into for his next song. The word “happy” was easy enough – broad smiles, hands angled upwards around beaming faces.
Somehow, he also guessed “flying chair,” a reference to a stunt in an episode of “Run Jin,” though the fan in the floor seats who waved their chair overhead might have been what did it.
“Super Tuna” followed with Jin in a broad straw hat and what looked like rubber boots – a fisherman’s outfit, perhaps? – as fans sang and danced wildly to the upbeat dance pop song, which, judging by the number of fish-themed T-shirts, hats and accessories in the crowd, is a fan favorite.
After spinning a wheel to pick a song for the audience to sing, which Jin rigged to give them “Anpanman” based on their cheers, he ducked off stage to change as the sing-along unfolded.
He returned to the stage in a slim black suit with silver buttons on the seams of his pants, sitting alone at a piano to accompany himself solo first on “I Will Come to You,” which ended with a lovely falsetto run, and next “Abyss,” which started solo before the band joined in halfway through.
In addition to the light-changing bombs that most in the crowd waved throughout the night, the crowd also, well, barked at him often between songs. Apparently, this has become a tradition for K-pop fans of certain acts.
After the big rock anthem “Another Level,” which saw guitarist Park Shin-won step out to solo as Jin sang, he led the audience in the Sing-Along Game, which gave 30 seconds to guess the song that fans were singing from lyrics unseen by him on the screen or get bonked on the head by silver tray suspended over him. (It’s another bit from the “Run Jin” series.)
“Don’t Say You Love Me,” which he’d sung on stage earlier in the show, was easy. “No More Dream,” which drew laughter from the crowd when the lyrics on screen shifted to Korean and suddenly a whole lot of mumbling ensued, he missed. Bonk!
The latter run of the show included mostly high-energy numbers such as “Loser,” a terrific number off “Echo,” the seven-song EP he released in May, and whose seven tracks all showed up in the set. “Rope It,” a country dance number, saw Jin in cowboy garb doing a bit of boot-scooting shimmies down the ramp out from the stage.
BTS songs showed up here as well, with a medley that opened with “Dynamite” and “Butter,” a pair of that band’s best bangers, and ended with “Mikrokosmos” and “Spring Day.”
“The Astronaut” ended with Jin on his back amid the confetti streamers that blasted off midway through the number before “Nothing Without You” closed out the main set with Jin sinking through a stage trapdoor.
Two more BTS numbers, “Epiphany” and “Moon,” opened the encore, with Jin going down to the floor to get fans to sing the wordless melody that’s featured in “Moon.”
Then with “To Me, Today,” a peppy number with a crowd chant at points in the chorus, he wrapped up the night, and with it, edged one step closer to the return of BTS in spring 2025. Coachella perhaps? They’ve never played it, though their K-pop peers Blackpink have. Or a new stadium tour like their last tour, which played multiple nights at SoFi Stadium.
One way or another, it is coming.