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Watch BTS' 2020 speech at the United Nations General Assembly

bts grammys 2020
BTS attends the 2020 Grammys.
  • BTS delivered remarks on Wednesday at the 75th United Nations General Assembly.

  • The group spoke to future generations, contextualized within the current moment of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • In the speech, BTS delivered a message of persistence and hope, speaking about their own struggles with loneliness and creativity during the pandemic.

  • Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

On Wednesday, BTS spoke at the 75th United Nations General Assembly, delivering a message of hope and reassurance to encourage people to continue living on despite current hardships.

The group was invited to speak by the Group of Friends of Solidarity for Global Health Security, which was founded by South Korea in 2020 to discuss health issues like the coronavirus pandemic, Soompi reported. Due to present circumstances, the 75th general assembly is being held primarily through virtual meetings and pre-recorded speeches.

 

During the speech, all seven members of BTS — RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook — delivered a message of hope, describing their own personal struggles and feelings of loneliness during the pandemic.

"COVID-19 was beyond my imagination," group leader RM said during the speech. "Our world tour was totally canceled. All of our plans went away, and I became alone. I looked up but couldn't see the stars at night."

Jimin echoed the sentiment, saying, "I felt hopeless. Everything fell apart. I could only look outside my window, I could only go to my room. Yesterday, I was singing and dancing with fans around the world, and now my world had shrunk to a room."

"The room itself was small, but my world and our world reached far and wide," Suga said. "In this world we had our instruments, our phones, and our fans."

The group has been staying connected with fans throughout the pandemic, hosting virtual concerts like "Bang Bang Con: The Live"  and promoting their most recent single "Dynamite," which made history by topping the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart during its first week. Now, they're gearing up to release a new album that the group has said will come out in 2020.

While they've certainly been staying busy, the group members were candid about their personal struggles during the pandemic. "I was frustrated and depressed, but I took notes, wrote songs, and thought about who I was," V said. "I thought, 'If I give up here, then I'm not the star of my life. This is what an awesome person would do.'"

J-Hope said during the speech that eventually, the group began to create together once more. "I don't know who was first. We embraced all those emotions and the seven of us began to make music together," he said. Now, the group is working towards releasing another album in 2020, which V said during a press conference in August will show "the unique color of BTS more than any album we have made before."

While the group is looking ahead towards the future, Jin stressed the importance of appreciating the present. "Thinking about the future and trying hard are all important. But cherishing yourself, encouraging yourself, and keeping yourself happy is the most important," he said. "In a world of uncertainty, we must cherish the importance of 'me,' 'you,' and 'us.'"

That's a message that has shown through in BTS' discography as well, not only in the group's introspective "Love Yourself" trilogy, but in songs like "2!3!" in which the group, per a Genius translation, sings to their fans, called ARMY, "It's okay come on when I say one two three forget it / Erase all sad memories hold my hand and smile."

"If there's something I can do, if our voices can give strength to people, then that's what we want and that's what we'll keep on doing," Jungkook said during the speech.

This isn't the first time BTS has delivered remarks at the UN General Assembly — in 2018, the group became the first K-pop group to address the United Nations, with leader RM saying at the time, "No matter who you are, where you're from, your skin color, gender identity: speak yourself."

BTS also partnered with UNICEF on the "Love Myself" anti-violence campaign that launched in November 2017. By November 2018, the group raised approximately $1.4 million for UNICEF.

This time, as is a relative constant with BTS, their message was one of hope and persistence. "Life goes on," they said together. "Let's live on."

Read the original article on Insider