Client: DAZED
Jung Kook holds the instinctual and the intangible in high regard: the former is what guides his present, but his future is cradled by the latter, at least in terms of how he sees himself as an artist. But more on that later, because Jung Kook – who recently turned 26 and has been very, very famous for a decade – is thinking about who he is at this very moment. “I think I’m the type of person who is honest with their emotions,” he says. “I change quickly. I have to do the things I want to do right now.”
We’re talking over Zoom, Jung Kook in a nondescript room within the enormous building that is the Seoul headquarters of HYBE, the multi-label corporation which began as Big Hit Entertainment in 2005, and which had never trained or debuted a K-pop idol group before BTS. A week prior, he’d been in London, and before that, New York City, battling a heavy head cold which he somehow hid from view in the slick perfection of his live television performances.
In the north London studio where this story is photographed, Jung Kook is patient and accommodating but also intensely quiet, his gaze following the frenetic activity around him. He’s an introvert by nature, and there are at least, by a quick headcount, 40 people on set, half of whom are his own entourage, including two suited bodyguards. Everyone’s eyes are fixed on him at all times, watching his every move, every tiny shift of his hair, clothes and expression. It seems utterly exhausting. One of his team smiles and shrugs, “He’s used to it.”
Taylor Glasby 