Who was the last member to join BTS?

With more than 20 albums released, including EPs, studio albums, repackages and singles, 5 world tours that took RM, Jin, Sucks, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook for countries in America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania and Antarctica, several musical awards and achievements that guaranteed entries into the famous book of records, the Guinness Book, BTS is one of the biggest k-pop groups today.

The group’s many achievements have been achieved over the more than 11 years of their career, as BTS debuted on June 13, 2013 with the mini-album “2 Cool 4 Skool” and the title song “No More Dream”, becoming, from then on, the main group of BIGHIT Music (formerly Big Hit Entertainment), an agency that can grow along with the success of the group.

Even though BTS has been around for over a decade, its fandom has not stagnated, as the number of admirers of the septet only grows and, with so many new fans, some details about the group’s origin may be new to many, generating questions such as: who was the last member to join the formation?

The truth is that there are two possible answers, as there is one member who was the last to join the agency and another who became the last one revealed to the public as part of BTS.

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As reported by the Koreaboo portal, Jimin auditioned for BIGHIT in 2011, and joined the company as a trainee in 2012, becoming the last BTS member to sign with the agency and the last to join the group.

Jimin in fact, it might not have debuted with BTS, since the founder of BIGHIT, Si-Hyuk Bangthought the idol was “incomplete”, as revealed by the CEO himself in a statement for the first episode of the Disney+ documentary series, “BTS Monuments: Beyond The Star”.

Second Jiminthe reason why Si-Hyuk Bang was skeptical about letting him debut was the difficulty in executing the group’s choreography, since his specialty was modern dance, and idol group choreography was very different from that, as stated by the idol on JTBC’s “Please Take Care Of My Refrigerator”.

However, he managed to debut with the support of his fellow members. “The members strongly insisted that the team needed to have someone like Jimin. And my intuitions weren’t always right. So I accepted him because I believed there was a reason they were so insistent. Looking back, it was a very close call. If I had gone against him at the time…”, he said. Si-Hyuk Bang in the documentary.

Although, for BTS, the confirmation of Jimin as a member was the last, for the fans it was different, since there was a “hidden member” who did not participate in any activities during the pre-debut, and did not post in the fan clubs.

His identity remained a secret until June 2, 2013, when, through a post on X (formerly Twitter), ARMYs discovered the seventh member of the group: V! At the time, as reported by the PinkVanilla portal, he wrote:

I’m sure you’re all very curious about this, right? It’s finally time to say hello! I’m happy to be able to talk to our fans now. We have 10 days before we perform on stage. Excitement, nervousness, anticipation, tension… I spend each day attacking my heart with feelings that I can’t express. We’re cultivating the Bangtan hearts that we’ll give to our fans. So please continue to watch over us. Let’s meet in 10 days! Now, I’m going to calm my excitement and go practice to prepare for a great performance! I’ll be back next time.

Being chosen as the last member revealed to fans left V apprehensive at the time. “To be perfectly, perfectly honest, when they said I was a hidden member, I really thought I had been cut from the team.”, he said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2021 (via Observatório dos Famosos).

Still, everything went well, and today V says he takes the situation lightly, joking that he would like to be able to reprimand Bang Si Hyuk for putting him in that position.

I can laugh about it now, for sure. As long as I can kind of shake our CEO, the head of our record label, and shake him up a little bit. But yeah, I can laugh about it.”