Arirang - How a Korean Folk Song Matches Portuguese 'Saudade' Feeling

Rosa Gulliver of TINYGMUSIC | January 16, 2026

Some emotions that refuse to stay inside borders. They travel without passports, settle quietly in the chest, and make themselves understood even when the words fail. Arirang, Korea’s most enduring folk song, is one of them. Saudade, the Portuguese word for a deep, aching longing, is another. They come from different histories, different languages, and different musical traditions, yet they recognise each other instantly.

You don’t have to be Korean to feel Arirang. You don’t have to be Portuguese to understand saudade. Both are proof that human emotion has a shared grammar, even when the vocabulary changes.

Arirang is often described as a song about separation, exile, and longing. But that description barely scratches the surface. Over centuries, Arirang has carried the emotional weight of Korea’s history: colonisation, war, division, migration, and survival. It has been sung by farmers, freedom fighters, mourners, and migrants leaving home behind.

Musically, Arirang is deceptively simple. Its melody moves slowly, almost gently. Yet it pulls at something deep and unresolved. It doesn’t rush toward closure. Instead, it lingers on loss, on memory, on the quiet pain of loving something you may never fully return to. That lingering is precisely what gives the song its power.

When people unfamiliar with Korea hear Arirang for the first time, they often say the same thing: I don’t know what it’s saying, but I feel it. That reaction isn’t accidental. The song was never meant to explain pain; it was meant to hold it.

Saudade: When Longing Becomes an Identity

Saudade is famously untranslatable. It’s often described as longing, nostalgia, or melancholy, but none of those words fully contain it. Saudade is the presence of absence. It’s missing something or someone while knowing that what you miss has shaped who you are.

In Portuguese culture, especially through fado music, saudade isn’t treated as something to fix. It’s something to honour. The sadness is not separate from love; it exists because love existed first. To feel saudade implies being aware that connection never truly disappears even when distance or time intervene.

This is where saudade and Arirang quietly meet. Neither is loud grief. Neither demands resolution. Both accept that some emotions are meant to be carried, not cured.

BTS, Arirang, and the Weight of Waiting

Absence has never been incidental to BTS’s story; it has shaped it. From the beginning, their music has returned again and again to themes of separation, endurance, and faith in reunion. The group’s recent years only deepened that narrative. Solo projects, necessary distance, and the completion of mandatory military service fractured the familiar image of “seven together,” replacing it with waiting; quiet, uncertain, deeply felt.

In that context, naming their upcoming album ARIRANG is not just symbolic. It is intentional. It is also perfect.

Arirang is a song born of parting, but it is not a farewell. It assumes separation while holding space for return. By invoking it at the moment of their reunion as a full seven-member group, BTS places their own absence within a much older emotional framework, one that understands distance as meaningful rather than destructive.

For fans, this matters. The years of separation were not empty time. They were filled with individual growth, longing, trust, and patience, the same emotional terrain Arirang has travelled for generations. When BTS returns together under this name, they are not erasing that distance; they are honouring it.

There is something deeply Korean in that choice, but also something unmistakably universal. Listeners around the world recognise the feeling instantly: missing something that still feels present, believing in a bond that persists even when unseen. This is where Arirang becomes more than heritage; it becomes a shared emotional language between artists and audience.

BTS’s ARIRANG is not a nostalgic gesture. It is a statement that reunion carries weight because separation came first. Like the folk song itself, it does not rush toward resolution. It acknowledges that what was endured remains part of what is loved.

Why Arirang Resonates Beyond Korea

In today's globalised world, many people live lives shaped by distance. They leave home, reinvent their identities, and exist between cultures. Arirang resonates with this experience without needing to name it. It speaks to immigrants, to diaspora communities, and to anyone who has outgrown one version of themselves but still mourns it.

The song doesn’t tell you where home is. It simply acknowledges that home matters. That’s why Arirang feels especially powerful now, at a moment when Korean culture has become deeply global and when BTS, one of the most internationally influential Korean groups, has chosen ARIRANG as the title of their upcoming album following their reunion as seven members.

This is why Arirang transcends borders. It speaks to the universal human experience of longing for a place, a time, or a feeling that defines who we are.

A Shared Emotional Grammar

Arirang and saudade both teach us that longing is not weakness. It’s evidence of connection. They remind us that pain can be communal, that memory can be musical, and that some feelings are powerful precisely because they resist simplification.

When a Korean folk song written centuries ago can move a listener across the world, and when a Portuguese word can explain that feeling better than translation ever could, it becomes clear: emotion travels more faithfully than language ever will.

And maybe that’s why Arirang endures, not just as a song, but as a feeling the world already knows by another name.

BTS will release new music on March 20, 2026 with a world tour to follow, signalling a return set to be etched in pop culture history.