For V, the military break was not just a pause in his career. It was a forced separation from the version of himself the world knew best. After years of living almost entirely as one-seventh of BTS, he found himself in a place where performing was no longer possible, no matter how much he wanted it. And that reality pushed him into something much deeper than simple waiting. It became a period of withdrawal, reflection, discipline, and quiet reconstruction.

Much of V’s identity as an artist has always felt distinct within BTS. He grew up spending a large part of his childhood with his grandmother in Geochang, a small town in southern South Korea, where he developed a taste for older music. Artists like Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley helped shape his sensibility early on, and that influence still lingers in the mood he gives off now. Among BTS’s members, V has long stood apart for his brooding, smoky presence and the rich baritone that gives his performances a different texture from the brighter, higher voices around him.

That lower register is something he knows well. He openly admits that he does not have the kind of effortless high notes that come naturally to someone like Jimin. He describes himself as being on the lower end vocally, and although he says he has learned a great deal and improved through BTS’s past albums, he also sounds realistic about his limitations. For him, that challenge has never disappeared. It is simply something he continues to work with. That self-awareness says a lot about the way he seems to view his place in the group: not with insecurity, but with a kind of calm honesty.

Even so, his artistic importance has never really been in question. He has always been a crucial part of BTS’s sound, and on Arirang, his songwriting contributions included key tracks like “Into the Sun.” There is a quiet confidence in the way he talks about his growth, as if he no longer needs to overstate what he brings. He knows his strengths, knows his weaknesses, and seems comfortable building from both.

When asked how he felt in 2022, as it became increasingly clear that a break was coming, V did not try to dress up the loss. He said that while in the military, the members could not perform even if they wanted to, and that reality created a deep longing in him. He missed everything: releasing an album, singing, dancing, standing in front of people again. He described that feeling simply as desire, a word that seems almost too soft for how deeply it appears to have affected him.

But rather than remain stuck in frustration, he tried to adapt to the life he had no choice but to live. He acknowledged that the group was needed by their country, and that meant doing their best under those circumstances. What is most striking is the way he explains how he coped with that transition. He says he tried very hard to forget about “V of BTS” for a while so he could concentrate on living as Kim Taehyung. That line carries enormous weight. It suggests that military service did not just interrupt his schedule. It forced him to step away from the public identity that had consumed so much of his life and face the person underneath it.

That process became, in his words, a chance to rebuild and reset both his mind and body. He knew from the start that military service would last a long time, so he wanted to make sure he did not waste it. Instead of treating it as dead time, he approached it almost like an internal project. He thought deeply about his values, his health, and the kind of person he wanted to become. He reflected on his inner world, looked back on himself, and tried to imagine the version of himself he hoped to emerge as in the future.

The discipline of that rebuilding seems to have taken several forms. Physically, he worked out a great deal. Mentally, he read and listened to music constantly. He describes that period as a year and a half spent reorganizing himself from the inside out. There is no grand dramatic language in the way he tells it, but the implication is powerful. He was not simply waiting to come back. He was trying to return stronger, clearer, and more grounded than before.

Books also became part of that journey. He says he asked a friend for reading recommendations, and from there spent much of his time reading works by Han Kang and Keigo Higashino, along with a philosophy book called Eleven Steps. What seems to have mattered most was not just the books themselves, but the way he entered them. He says he found himself placing his own imagination into the texts, almost inhabiting them like a character in a novel. Whether or not that was practically helpful, he is not entirely sure. But it clearly opened a mental space where he could dream, reflect, and examine himself differently.

When the conversation shifted to BTS itself, V’s answer again revealed how he sees group dynamics. In a seven-member act, there is always the possibility of ego, of frustration over fewer lines or a less central position in a song. But V does not frame it that way. He says he is more concerned with doing a good job than with taking up more sonic space. Even when a part is smaller, he does not feel resentful, because another member will fill that space instead. In fact, he says he sometimes feels relieved. For him, the real issue is not individual dominance, but whether all seven members truly fit a song together. If they do not, then the group simply passes on it.

That mindset may be one of the clearest insights into what makes BTS work after all these years. Even as V has developed a highly recognizable identity of his own, he still talks about the group less like a battlefield of competing egos and more like a system that only works when everyone locks in together.

In the end, what emerges from his reflections is not the story of a star impatiently waiting for the spotlight to return. It is the story of an artist who used enforced silence to confront himself. V did not just spend military service missing the stage. He spent it trying to rediscover Kim Taehyung without losing what makes V so singular. And perhaps that is why his return feels different now — not just like a comeback, but like the reappearance of someone who used absence to become more fully himself.