Violence against Asian Americans has risen dramatically over the past year. The coalition Stop AAPI Hate has tracked nearly 4,000 incidents of discrimination over the past year alone, as NPR reported earlier this month, though experts and advocates stress that the actual number is likely much higher.
In March 2021 alone, a gunman in Atlanta killed six women of Asian descent amid widely circulated social-media videos of other brutal anti-Asian attacks in New York City and elsewhere.
The members of BTS have taken to Twitter to speak out, both in English and Korean, against this uptick in violence and racist incidents as well as to reveal that they themselves — J-Hope, Jimin, Jin, Jungkook, RM, Suga, and V — have faced discrimination, though.