Jin recently offered a revealing look at what makes working within BTS different from pursuing music as a solo artist. Speaking to GQ, he explained that group projects require the members to constantly coordinate their opinions and find a direction that everyone can accept. Solo activities may provide far more freedom because an artist can make decisions independently without negotiating every creative detail with several other people. However, that freedom also creates a different kind of pressure because the responsibility for every decision ultimately falls on one person. For Jin, the contrast highlights something important about BTS: the group’s strength has never depended simply on individual talent, but on its ability to make collective decisions. After more than a decade together, that shared process appears to have become one of the reasons the members continue to feel secure when they are working as BTS.
Jin’s comments are particularly interesting because group collaboration can easily become complicated when several highly accomplished artists have different creative instincts. Every member of BTS has developed an individual identity, musical taste, and perspective through years of performing and creating music. That means a group project could theoretically become a constant battle over whose ideas should take priority. Instead, Jin describes a system in which the members listen to one another and gradually move toward a common solution. The process may take more time than simply allowing one person to make the final call, but it also gives the members a sense that their voices matter. In that environment, compromise does not necessarily mean sacrificing individuality; it can mean deliberately choosing when individuality should serve the larger identity of BTS.
Solo work, by contrast, places Jin in a completely different position. When he works alone, he can decide what kind of music he wants to make, how he wants to present himself, and which creative ideas deserve to become finished projects. There is no need to persuade six other members that a particular concept is worth pursuing. Yet Jin pointed out that this freedom comes with greater personal pressure because there is no collective responsibility to share the burden. If something works, the accomplishment belongs directly to him, but if something fails, there is nowhere else for that responsibility to go. His comments suggest that independence can be liberating while simultaneously becoming emotionally heavier. That may explain why the experience of returning to BTS can feel reassuring even after each member has developed more confidence as an individual artist.
For Jin, one of the biggest sources of that reassurance has always been the presence of the other members. After spending so many years together, BTS has developed a kind of familiarity that cannot easily be recreated in a temporary creative partnership. The members know one another’s personalities, habits, strengths, weaknesses, and communication styles. That history allows them to disagree without necessarily interpreting disagreement as personal rejection. They have already experienced enough challenges together to understand that one creative argument does not threaten the existence of the group. Jin’s comments therefore point toward something deeper than simple friendship. BTS functions as a long-term support system in which the members can take risks individually while knowing that there is still a collective identity waiting for them.
When GQ asked how BTS has maintained such a strong bond for more than a decade, Jin gave particular credit to RM. Rather than describing the group’s longevity as something that happened naturally, he identified RM’s leadership as a major reason the members are able to work together. Jin explained that RM listens carefully to the opinions of each member before helping guide everyone toward what appears to be the best overall solution. That description presents RM less as someone who imposes decisions and more as someone who organizes different perspectives into a workable direction. Leadership in that sense is not about having the loudest voice in the room. It is about creating enough space for every voice to be heard before the group commits to a decision.
That distinction helps explain why RM’s role has remained so important despite BTS having members who are older than him. Jin and SUGA, for example, are both older members of the group, yet age has never automatically translated into leadership authority within BTS. RM’s position is based less on seniority and more on his ability to communicate, mediate, and represent the collective. Jin’s description suggests that the members recognize this distinction and are comfortable allowing RM to guide discussions after everyone has had an opportunity to contribute. In other words, the group does not appear to operate according to a simple hierarchy in which the oldest member automatically decides what happens. Instead, leadership seems to come from trust, competence, and the ability to turn disagreement into consensus.
Jin also revealed an intriguing aspect of his creative relationship with RM. According to his explanation, both he and RM often choose to reserve their more personal creative ideas for their solo projects instead of insisting that those ideas become part of BTS activities. That may sound like a minor detail, but it reveals an important boundary between individual ambition and group identity. An artist can have a strong personal vision without believing that every personal idea needs to be incorporated into the group’s work. By separating certain creative instincts into solo projects, Jin and RM can protect the flexibility of BTS while still giving themselves space to explore their own artistic identities. The result is not necessarily less creativity, but a more deliberate distribution of creativity.
This approach may also prevent the group from becoming trapped in endless creative negotiations. If every member insisted that every personal concept had to be included in a BTS project, reaching a final direction would become increasingly difficult. Instead, individual members can recognize that some ideas are better suited to their solo careers. That allows BTS projects to focus on what the members collectively believe represents them at that particular moment. Meanwhile, solo releases become spaces where members can experiment without needing to make those experiments fit the expectations of six other artists. Jin’s explanation therefore reveals a surprisingly mature form of collaboration. Sometimes the best way to protect a group is knowing when not to bring every personal preference into the group discussion.
The same principle may help explain why BTS has remained recognizable as a group while its members have developed distinct identities. Jin’s solo work does not have to sound exactly like BTS, just as RM’s individual projects do not need to follow the same creative rules as a group album. The freedom to explore different directions individually can actually strengthen the collective because members return with new experiences and perspectives. Instead of viewing solo activities as competition with the group, they can function as additional creative outlets. That makes the relationship between BTS and its individual members more flexible. The group can remain united without requiring every member to sacrifice the individuality that has helped make each of them successful.
Fans have also pointed out the significance of RM’s leadership in light of the group’s age dynamics. BTS has never been a group in which leadership simply follows the oldest-to-youngest order. RM is younger than Jin and SUGA, yet his role as leader has been accepted for years because the other members trust his judgment and communication style. Jin’s recent comments reinforce the idea that RM’s authority comes from how he handles the group rather than from his age. He listens first, considers different perspectives, and then helps the members reach a decision. That kind of leadership can be especially valuable when seven people have to maintain a shared identity while simultaneously building individual careers.
The trust Jin describes also appears to have developed through repetition. BTS has spent thousands of hours together in rehearsals, recordings, performances, interviews, tours, and countless private conversations that audiences never see. Over time, those experiences create an understanding that does not need to be explained every time a disagreement occurs. A member can challenge an idea without necessarily challenging the relationship itself. That distinction is crucial for any long-running creative partnership because disagreement is inevitable when multiple people are creating together. BTS’s longevity may therefore have less to do with avoiding conflict and more to do with learning how to survive conflict without allowing it to destroy the foundation of the group.
There is another important implication in Jin’s comments about pressure. Solo activities may offer freedom, but freedom can become isolating when every decision belongs to the individual. In BTS, a difficult decision can be discussed with six other people who understand the unusual pressures surrounding the group. Even when they disagree, the members are not facing the uncertainty alone. Jin’s statement that having the members together has always been reassuring suggests that the emotional value of BTS extends beyond music. The group provides a shared sense of responsibility that can make enormous professional challenges feel more manageable. For artists who have spent more than ten years growing up and changing in public, that kind of stability can be extraordinarily valuable.
RM’s leadership, then, should not be understood simply as the authority to make decisions. Jin’s description presents him as a facilitator who helps transform seven individual opinions into one collective direction. That requires listening, patience, judgment, and enough trust from the other members to allow him to guide the final discussion. It also requires RM himself to understand that leadership does not mean winning every argument. His role becomes meaningful precisely because he allows other members to influence the outcome. In a group as globally successful as BTS, where every member has enormous individual visibility, maintaining that balance is arguably more difficult than achieving fame in the first place.
Jin’s remarks also quietly challenge the idea that BTS’s success can be explained only through talent or popularity. Those factors obviously matter, but neither can guarantee that seven people will remain creatively connected for more than a decade. Groups often fracture because of conflicting ambitions, communication problems, exhaustion, or disagreements over direction. BTS’s experience suggests that longevity requires an infrastructure of trust underneath the music. Each member needs enough individual freedom to remain fulfilled while still accepting that group activities require compromise. Jin’s explanation of his relationship with RM offers a glimpse into how that balance may actually work behind the scenes.
The most striking part of Jin’s comments may therefore be what they reveal about choosing the group without losing oneself. He does not describe BTS as a place where individual creativity disappears. Instead, he describes a system in which some ideas are deliberately saved for solo work while the group focuses on reaching a direction everyone can support. That separation allows Jin, RM, SUGA, and the other members to remain individual artists while continuing to function as one team. It also explains why disagreements do not necessarily threaten the group’s identity. Everyone has another space in which their personal creative instincts can breathe.
Ultimately, Jin’s interview provides a much more nuanced explanation for BTS’s extraordinary longevity. Their bond does not appear to come from never disagreeing or from always thinking alike. Instead, it seems to come from knowing how to listen, compromise, trust one another, and understand when individual ambitions belong outside the group. RM’s leadership plays a crucial role because he helps organize those different voices without reducing them to a simple hierarchy. Jin’s willingness to reserve certain ideas for solo projects shows an equally important form of maturity: sometimes protecting the group means knowing which parts of yourself to express elsewhere. After more than a decade, BTS’s greatest strength may therefore be less about seven people always moving in exactly the same direction and more about seven individuals trusting one another enough to find that direction together.
