The capacity of Goyang Stadium in South Korea is more than 41,000, and on a cold, rainy evening on April 9, K-pop group BTS kicked off their Arirang world tour there – their first concert together in four years.
Of the thousands of fans attending the sold-out show that night, it was unlikely many had taken a 10-hour flight the day after finishing 18 rounds of chemotherapy. I was that person: a 36-year-old BTS fan who had received a devastating breast cancer diagnosis just a few months earlier.
You might ask: What kind of cancer patient would travel from Dubai to Seoul for a boy band? For true BTS fans, also known as the Army, this wild decision would not seem so baffling.
My first live encounter with BTS
My history with BTS goes back to the summer of 2019, when I discovered their music by chance.
The interest started, as these things do, with my wanting to learn more about who these seven musicians were: their names, their roles in the group and what their lyrics meant. By sheer luck, the group, made up of RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook, announced they would be bringing their Love Yourself: Speak Yourself world tour to Riyadh.
With the Saudi city being just a short flight away from Dubai, where I live, and at my co-worker’s urging that I’d regret not catching the concert when it was so close by, I knew I needed to make the leap and go.
So, in October 2019, I attended my first-ever BTS show. It was one of the most daring things I had done in my 30 years of life, having never travelled just for a concert before. And it was a defining moment that cemented my appreciation for the seven South Korean musicians.
Six years later, the month of October would come to mean something very different.
A devastating diagnosis
I was diagnosed with Stage 2B breast cancer in October 2025. I had no family history and, when I went to the doctor with a complaint of skin thickening on my right breast, I never imagined I would leave with such a grave outcome.
The diagnostic process felt like a two-week horror story. Between mammograms, biopsies, scans, and endless waiting, it felt as though my body had betrayed me – an unfairness that was visceral and all-consuming. What kept me grounded and hopeful, alongside my naturally positive outlook, was being a fangirl – specifically, a fan of BTS.
The K-pop group are not the centre of my existence, but they’ve provided the vivid, life-affirming soundtrack to it. Their music, as well as their genuineness as people, allowed me to draw strength and comfort when I needed it most.
BTS have also helped me make friends all over the world. Fellow Army in places as far-flung as Hong Kong, Norway and California have given me love. They were a shoulder to cry on during treatment and a source of motivation. They responded with a resounding “yes!” when I asked whether I should book yet another concert ticket.
How BTS kept me going
During cancer treatment, BTS consistently brought me joy in my darkest and loneliest moments, and the release of their album Arirang gave me something exciting to look forward to.
The accompanying tour announcement, which would begin just as my treatment would end, felt like divine timing, and I knew I needed to once again make a leap and be there for those first shows at Goyang Stadium.
I was taking a lot of medicine at that point. I was undergoing two chemotherapy regimens and receiving two monoclonal antibody therapies, and it was intense. Extreme nausea and diarrhoea brought me to tears, while the all-encompassing fatigue drove me to some of the darkest places the mind can go. My life felt as though it had been turned inside out.
But the anticipation of being in the audience worked as well as any medicine. It kept me going.
Like thousands of fans around the world, I sat in front of my laptop and fought for tickets to the opening shows of the tour in Goyang. My friends and I chatted online excitedly as we watched our queue numbers advance, our hearts in our throats. We had waited years for this moment: a BTS comeback.
The thrill of it all – new music, new concerts, ticketing for those concerts – overtook me, allowing me to forget – if only briefly – that I had cancer. I was a profoundly sick woman, but in that moment, I was simply a fangirl looking forward to seeing my favourite artists. The same fangirl who, six years earlier, had planned a trip to Riyadh for my first BTS concert.
Once the tickets were secured, and I knew I would be seeing the band in a matter of months, I was so very happy. Suddenly, I had so much to look forward to again.
'I was travelling towards joy'
It served as a reminder that my life was far from over. I had an amazing family, incredible friends, a supportive workplace and an unbroken spirit. And, perhaps most importantly at that moment, I had BTS concert tickets waiting for me on the other side of treatment.
When I rang the bell outside my oncology ward to mark the end of chemotherapy, I had a huge smile on my face, knowing that I was done with one chapter and my reward was about 6,500km away.
So, yes, I got on that flight to Seoul the day after my final chemotherapy session – nearly bald from treatment, exhausted and nauseous, but determined. I had survived the hardest 18 weeks of my life.
There was still more to come: a single mastectomy after I returned from South Korea, followed by continued treatment. The road ahead remained uncertain. But getting on that plane was the surest I had felt about anything in months. For the first time since my diagnosis, I wasn't travelling towards a hospital appointment. I was travelling towards joy.
And standing in that stadium, cold, drenched and freezing in the rain, I was the happiest I had been in a very long time.
As BTS performed for the first time together in years, they probably did not realise they were giving me so much hope. As they sang and danced their hearts out, they did not know that the light inside me was being rekindled. The lyrics from their song Spring Day remain a constant reminder: “The morning will come again, because no darkness or no season can last forever.”
Now, eight months after my diagnosis, I know two things: life does not end with a cancer diagnosis, and the things that bring us joy are worth holding on to – even if that means flying across the world for a boy band.
