We made it to 529 days. That’s wild. The original 529 days of content we promised at the beginning are coming to an “official” close. A community member asked, “So are you going to change the project’s name now?” To which we laughed. “No! Too much work.” Which is true. We’ve built a brand around the name ARMY Project 529, one that we’re immensely proud of. But that’s not the whole reason why we don’t plan to change our name. The 529 days had a very specific meaning originally—it was a goal, a milestone. But just because we’ve reached that goalpost, it doesn’t mean we can’t move it further down the field and go for it again. (Um, I’m terrible with sportsball metaphors, but I think that works on some level, right?) The “529” can represent something new. Maybe it’s a new time frame, or maybe it’s a number of livestreams, or maybe it’s just arbitrary and doesn’t have to mean anything at all, because the spirit of what we’ve created is bigger than any number or any name we could give ourselves. Last week we reflected on ARMY Project 529 from its start until now. We talked about lessons learned and what it all has meant to us. Feelings are hard, yo. So hard that we decided to do it again this week… TA DA! (jazz hands) This time we are looking to the future. What do we want to do, where do we want to take the project next? How do we feel about all of it? We’ve gathered some more questions based on BTS songs, but this time they’re aimed at making us think ahead. While we’re not going into specifics yet, we wanted to share with you all how ARMY Project 529 plans to begin its own Chapter Two… and that’s TOGETHER.

It’s June 2025… HAPPY FESTA!

This time next week we’ll be welcoming back four more members of BTS from their military service. We’ll be about to celebrate the group’s 12th Debut Anniversary with them, AND we’ll be gearing up for j-hope’s final concerts in Seoul and the release of his single, “Killin’ It Girl”. It feels like a whirlwind, right?

But hey. Look at us. We’ve almost made it to 529 days.

Who would’ve thought?

We did. We all did. Not every second of every day, but enough that we kept going to see Chapter One of ARMY Project 529 all the way to its FESTA finish line. But at the end of 2023, that goal seemed a million years away.

This week, join the six members of the Admin Team as we answer some questions picked by members of the AP529line and reflect on what this project and community have meant to us over the past year and a half. Grab a drink and some tissues, and hope that we “Don’t Make it Weird.”

Jung Kook has never minded being the youngest. He’s been called the Golden Maknae (황금막내/hwang-geummagnae) for almost half his life now. In a 2023 interview with Apple Music, Zane Lowe asks him if making and releasing his first solo album finally let him shed the feeling of being “the youngest”. To which JK replies: Even in 20 or 30 years, I will always be the youngest, the “maknae”. That will never change. It’s not said with any exasperation or regret. In fact, he just sounds fond. Fond and a little pleased. He smiles as he says, And I don’t really dislike being called ‘maknae’, before admitting that there is a certain privilege he knows was afforded him by virtue of being the youngest. Jung Kook has also credited his six BTS hyungs with being the reason he’s gotten as far as he has today, claiming that he learned and took something different from each one of them—things that shaped him into the man he is today. I just follow my own compass. This quote, from Jung Kook in his 2024 documentary “I Am Still”, sums up how he usually makes decisions for himself. He listens, feels, and trusts his gut. And those instincts were honed over many years of working together as part of a team and knowing how to play to everyone’s strengths. He approached developing a theme for Golden and finding material to fit it in typical JK fashion. Despite the fact that he wasn’t involved in the songwriting process, Jung Kook wasn’t careless with the songs he selected. He listened closely, and when he felt that pull from his inner compass—he followed it.