RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Rachel Martin. Even K-pop stars get treated the same as everyone else. In South Korea, there is compulsory military service for men, but some athletes and classical artists are exempt if they tour around the world. Recently, there've been calls for supergroups like BTS to get waivers, too. So the government considered it, but then there was all kinds of backlash. In the end, the culture minister said they will have to enlist even though he personally wished he could give BTS an exemption. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.