Behind story of how BTS ended up with President Watches
credit: u/friedeggovereasy

22 june 2019

The guy is an event organizer for the government.
He talks about how usually celebrities do not want to be associated with politics since even being lightly associated with any party may turn the followers of the other party against you. Not to mention, the the government usually doesn't pay well for these events.
But still, a lot of celebs do try to help out when they can and he's thankful. (of note, this is not to promote a politician, but to participate in events like Memorial day events, or events like the Friendship concert in Paris last October with BTS performance that President Moon attended).

I'm very thankful but truthfully, we can't pay them the appropriate payment. The payment to a celebrity comes down to negotiation between the two parties and there is no set standard amount. So the agency trying to get paid as much as they can is a natural thing.. but when negotiating with the government, that's not always possible. So they often have to have big sacrifices to their profits.
A lot of people forget that if a celebrity agrees to follow the president to an event in Europe, in addition to not being paid the regular pay for the event, they often have to clear about four days of other schedules. In addition to being tired, not doing the event is often beneficial to them, but they're not like that (meaning they still often help).

BTS was one of the most thankful cases. We tried to say the same thing to them. "We'll try to at least pay for your transportation and expenses." They came during the president's visit to Paris. They had one day free between performances in UK and Germany. Just one day. They were supposed to rest that one day but it overlapped with the president's visit to Paris.
To negotiate for this day, I went personally to New York and had a meeting.. and they said they'll do it...and I got the day from them. So then I told them this, "I'll at least pay for the transportation." And they snickered. I was there to negotiate as the representative for the government and I was prepared to pay for business class for the members. I knew I had to do at least that.

"We use private jets. Are you sure?" they asked. So I worked out the numbers. And including some of the staff, just the transportation would have cost about $100-200 K. Which was similar to the total budget we had for everything.
So I said, "Next time, I'll get you the president watches with gratefulness filling my heart." But thankfully, they let me trade the expenses for the watches. So it worked out. Again, thank you BTS.