Yeontan was never officially in BTS. He never sang a note. But when the black-and-tan Pomeranian died in late 2024, the mourning that followed was bigger than most human celebrities get, and it did not stop at sad posts. It turned into banners, donations, and a quiet lesson in what it looks like when millions of people grieve one small dog well.
A star’s dog, announced gone from an army base
On December 2, 2024, BTS member Kim Taehyung, known to the world as V, shared the news on his Instagram story while he was still serving his mandatory enlistment in the South Korean military. “The reason I’m writing this post today is that recently, Yeontan has embarked on a long journey to the dog stars,” he wrote, in a translation shared by Soompi. He asked ARMY to keep Yeontan in their memories, to wish the pup happiness up among the stars, and to close out the year by telling the people they love that they love them, one more time.
The timing made it land harder. V had adopted Yeontan in 2017, and for most of the dog’s life the two were rarely apart. Then came enlistment in December 2023, and with it the long separation that every Korean pet owner in uniform knows. Yeontan died while V was still away.
Why fans called him the eighth member
Plenty of celebrities have pets. Very few pets have a résumé. Yeontan appeared on the cover of V’s 2023 solo album Layover, showed up throughout its photoshoots and packaging, and had a cameo in the 2019 music video for “Winter Bear.” In 2023 he even walked on stage with V during a broadcast of the South Korean music program M Countdown. BTS’s fandom, ARMY, watched him grow from a puppy into a fixture of V’s public life, and gave him the half-joking, fully sincere title of the eighth member of BTS.
That is why the grief was not abstract. One longtime fan wrote on X, “I will always remember the excitement from us and from Taehyung to show Yeontan for the first time.” On Reddit, another put it simply: fans had seen Yeontan since he was a little baby, and now they were saying goodbye.
The heart condition behind the story
Yeontan’s health struggles were public long before his death. In a 2023 appearance on the web show Pixid, V explained that Yeontan had a bad heart and had been through surgery twice, unsuccessfully both times, along with narrow airways that made breathing harder.
That combination is sadly familiar to veterinarians who see a lot of toy breeds. Pomeranians and other very small dogs are disproportionately prone to degenerative heart valve disease as they age, and to tracheal problems that can compound it.
“In toy breeds, a heart murmur and airway trouble often travel together, and each one makes the other harder to manage,” says Dr. Priya Nair. “What owners can actually control is the early part: get the murmur checked when your vet first hears it, keep weight down, and know your dog’s normal resting breathing rate, because a jump in that number at rest is the earliest home warning sign we have.”
None of that makes a loss like Yeontan’s preventable. Two failed surgeries mean the people around this dog tried very hard. But it is a reminder that in small breeds, a vet visit for “just a little cough” is never wasted.
What’s new since this was written
Yeontan’s story did not end in 2024. When V completed his military service on June 10, 2025, fans marked his discharge with a “V Road” of purple ribbons and around 130 banners near his base, and among the tributes was a banner of V with Yeontan floating above the celebration. Fan groups also collected over 1.2 million Korean won in donations for animal welfare organizations in Yeontan’s memory, turning grief for one very loved dog into help for dogs who never had his luck.
It is a model worth noticing. Public pet grief can curdle into spectacle, but ARMY pointed it somewhere useful: shelters, rescues, and the animals still waiting.
