Korean pop culture, in numbers

Where each BTS member was born

Two of the seven were born in Busan: Jimin and Jungkook. Two more were born in Daegu: Suga and V. The remaining three were born in three different cities. The table below has all seven, and then the part that is usually left out: what “from” is actually recording.

Every figure here is a place of birth, not a hometown. Wikidata records place of birth, which is not the same thing as where somebody is from. A hospital city is often recorded instead of the town a person grew up in. Everything below says "born in" and never "hometown", and where the two are known to differ, fans are usually right and the database is usually the one recording a hospital.

All seven, in debut order

MemberBorn nameBorn inAlso born there
RMKim Nam-joonGoyang5
JinKim Seok-jinGwacheon
SugaMin Yoon-giDaegu3
J-HopeJung Ho-seokGwangju4
JiminPark Ji-minBusan8
VKim Tae-hyungDaegu3
JungkookJeon Jung-kookBusan8

“Also born there” counts the other names, out of the 123 most-read Korean names we track, that Wikidata places in the same city. It is a count of people we happen to hold, not a count of everyone from that city.

By city, which is how the question usually comes

Which BTS member is from Busan?

Jimin and Jungkook were born in Busan. Wikidata places 7 other names from our list of 123 in Busan too.

Which BTS member is from Daegu?

Suga and V were born in Daegu. Wikidata places 2 other names from our list of 123 in Daegu too.

Which BTS member is from Goyang?

RM was born in Goyang. Wikidata places 5 other names from our list of 123 in Goyang too.

Which BTS member is from Gwacheon?

Jin was born in Gwacheon.

Which BTS member is from Gwangju?

J-Hope was born in Gwangju. Wikidata places 4 other names from our list of 123 in Gwangju too.

Who else came from the same cities

Out of the 123 most-read Korean names we could place on a map. Not a ranking of anything — just the other names our data puts in the same city.

Goyang (with RM): Lee Jun-ho, Doh Kyung-soo, Seunghan, JAY B, Lee Sung-kyoung

Daegu (with Suga): V, Song Hye-kyo, Son Ye-jin

Gwangju (with J-Hope): Bae Suzy, Park Shin-hye, Seungri, Goo Hara

Busan (with Jimin): Jungkook, Nam Joo-hyuk, Gong Yoo, Hwang Min-hyun, Sulli, Gang Dong-won, Lee Joon-gi, Ok Taec-yeon

Daegu (with V): Song Hye-kyo, Son Ye-jin, Suga

Busan (with Jungkook): Nam Joo-hyuk, Gong Yoo, Hwang Min-hyun, Jimin, Sulli, Gang Dong-won, Lee Joon-gi, Ok Taec-yeon

Why we say “born in” and not “from”

People searching this question type “from”, and we understand what they mean. But the only record we can check is Wikidata’s place of birth field, and a place of birth is frequently the city with the hospital, not the town somebody grew up in. Where fans and a database disagree about a member’s hometown, the fans are usually right and the database is usually recording a delivery room.

So read this page as: this is where the birth was registered. It is a fact about a record, not a claim about who anybody is or where they belong. We would rather hand you a narrower true thing than a wider one we cannot stand behind.

What this page cannot answer

14 seconds, with sound

Fourteen seconds, read aloud: two of the seven were born in Busan and two in Daegu. Wikidata records a place of birth, which is not the same thing as a hometown, and a hospital city is often recorded instead of the town a person grew up in. Free to repost with the address on it.

All our short films — each one built from a table on this site

Where to walk from here

The same map for 123 Korean names, not just BTS · The Korean stars who were not born in Korea · When a member is read about more than the group · Which K-pop names are looked up most · The acts whose members outshine the act · How old Korean stars were when they debuted · Birth dates, and what they cluster into

What we wrote from this data

How this was measured

Place of birth (P19) from Wikidata for each of the seven members, matched by stage name and by born name, then placed with the city's coordinates (P625). Reading figures alongside are lookups on four Southeast Asian Wikipedia editions, reads: August 2025 to July 2026, human traffic only, per million reads of each edition. The questions this page answers are not invented: they are the seventeen queries about BTS birthplaces that brought people to this site in the four weeks to 2026-08-26.

What this cannot tell you

Place of birth is not a hometown, and this page never calls it one. A hospital city is often recorded instead of the town a person grew up in, so where fans and Wikidata disagree, this page is showing you the record and not the life. Our reading figures measure curiosity on Southeast Asian Wikipedias only — they say nothing about popularity in Korea, and nothing about the cities themselves. Counts of "who else came from here" are limited to the 123 most-read Korean names we could place, so they are a sample of our own data and not a census of any city.