On November 16-17, the Korea Grand Music Awards (KGMA) took place for the first time in Incheon (Korea). This is a new music award organized by Ilgan Sports newspaper (also the organizer of the Golden Disc Awards).
However, in its first year, the award results were controversial. Kpop fans believed that the award organizers favored participating artists over deserving winners.
Controversy especially erupted when fans of J-Hope (BTS) were upset because he was treated unfairly.
KGMA uses a scoring system consisting of 20% professional jury evaluation, 45% streaming score/album sales/media score, and 35% fan voting.
Since fan votes have a significant contribution, fans of artists actively participated in voting.
There were initially two hip-hop-related categories: “Best Hip-Hop Artist” and “Best Hip-Hop Song.” BTS’s J-Hope led the vote in both categories, with 70% of the votes each.
However, after 2 months of voting, just 5 days before the awards ceremony, KGMA suddenly announced a change in the rules, merging the 2 awards into a single category "Best Hip-Hop Artist".
What surprised many was that the award was eventually given to Lee Young Ji, who only ranked 6th with 0.508% of the votes. Meanwhile, J-Hope took the lead with more than 81% of the votes.
Notably, fans had to pay to vote. For 2 months, fans spent time and money to ensure fair results, so they felt disrespected and accused the KGMA organizers of cheating with the final results.
One viewer expressed his disappointment: “If KGMA were to ignore all fan votes and award whoever the judges wanted, they should have done so from the start. KGMA completely ignored the fans who spent 2 months of their time and money voting for the top spot.”
The controversy didn’t stop there. In the “Best Band” category, newly formed girl band QWER was announced as the winner.
The decision sparked outrage as QWER only placed 3rd in the poll with 0.57% of the votes. PLAVE took the lead with 89% of the votes, and DAY6 came in 2nd with 9.5%, leaving empty-handed.
Many fans accused KGMA of taking advantage of Kpop fans' dedication and financial contributions.
Anti-show hashtags like "#KGMAUnfair" trended on the X platform.
