On 31st October 2025, G-Dragon took the stage at a welcoming banquet for the APEC summit, held at the Lahan Select Hotel in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province. He was the only K-pop artist invited to perform at the dinner. Among the three songs he performed was "POWER" — a track he had released exactly one year earlier, on 31st October 2024, ending a gap of seven years and four months since his previous solo work.

Two minutes and twenty-three seconds, eighty-eight months in the making

"POWER" was released as a digital single on the afternoon of 31st October 2024. The track runs two minutes and twenty-three seconds and blends English and Korean over a hip-hop production. Media coverage noted it was G-Dragon's first new solo material in 88 months. The lyrics were written by Kwon Ji-yong (G-Dragon's legal name), with production credits going to Tommy Brown, Seren Thomas and Steven Franks — a team that has worked on hits for Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and The Weeknd. Alongside the single, a partnership with EMPIRE, the American independent label, was announced. The track served as the lead single from his third studio album, "Übermensch", released on 25th February the following year.

Turning the question of "power" back on the media

G-Dragon has described "POWER" as a song about power itself — and said that, for him, power means music. He also stated that the track satirises the power of the media, explaining that his seven-year absence allowed him to observe the influence of the press from an outsider's perspective. One popular music critic pointed to a passage mid-song in which a news anchor appears and is held up to ridicule. The music video opens with imagery drawn from Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch and is shot in a single unbroken take, moving through sets representing a television studio, a construction site, a newsroom and a subway carriage.

G-Dragon was directly involved in the creative direction. In a behind-the-scenes video posted to his official YouTube channel on 12th November, he revealed that he participated in every stage of production, from the teaser to the finished music video. He proposed an escape-room-style structure — a sequence of atmospherically distinct spaces — and the closing image of leaping from a subway car into the sky was his own idea. He also suggested releasing a recording-booth clip ahead of the comeback. In the video, he said he wanted to "mix in a lot of interesting visuals." On the anticipated response, he offered a chain of logic: "Response? It'll be good. That'll be exciting. If I'm excited, I'll keep going. If I keep going, people will love it. And that way, we'll last forever."

The numbers from the first day

Upon release, "POWER" went straight to number one on the real-time charts of Melon, Genie, Bugs and Vibe — South Korea's principal streaming platforms. On Melon alone, 83,000 users had listened within five minutes of release, and the track entered the daily chart at number two on 1st November. Within less than 24 hours, Melon had recorded more than 820,000 cumulative listeners. The music video attracted 100,000 simultaneous viewers at the moment of its release and surpassed 1.5 million views within an hour. It entered YouTube's trending music chart at third place, climbed to second within four hours, and reached number one by 1pm on 1st November after crossing 8 million views. It passed 10 million views within a day and broke 23 million within twelve days. Reports at the time indicated it had topped the iTunes Top Songs chart in fifteen countries as of 1st November. According to Wikipedia's tracking of South Korea's Circle chart, the song reached third on the weekly chart and 29th on the Billboard Global 200.

From MAMA to APEC

On 23rd November, G-Dragon appeared at the 2024 MAMA Awards, held at Kyocera Dome in Osaka, Japan, performing alongside Taeyang and Daesung in a three-member Big Bang reunion. The setlist reportedly included "POWER", "HOME SWEET HOME", "Bang Bang Bang" and "Fantastic Baby". He received the Music Visionary of the Year award that evening, remarking that he had shared seventeen years of history with MAMA. He also called it his comeback stage after seven years. "HOME SWEET HOME" had been released the previous day, 22nd November.

At the Korean Music Awards on 27th February 2025, "POWER" won the Best Rap & Hip-Hop Song prize. Then, on 31st October, at the APEC banquet in Gyeongju, G-Dragon performed "POWER", "HOME SWEET HOME" and "DRAMA" before an audience of heads of state — among them Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was photographed filming the performance on his smartphone. Also appearing at the banquet were choreographers Lee Jung and Honey J, and violinist Kim Yeona.

In brief

"POWER" compressed seven years of silence into two minutes and twenty-three seconds, and turned the question of power back on the media. Exactly one year after its release, the same song was sung before the leaders of the world.