IU is a top female solo singer in Korea with many outstanding achievements throughout her career. However, recently, when the 2025 MAMA music awards ceremony was held in Hong Kong (China), the audience once again discussed why IU had not appeared at this event for a decade.
MAMA is one of the largest music awards in Korea and has an influence in Asia. Each MAMA awards ceremony season brings together famous Kpop artists and groups of the year.
After 16 years of pursuing a singing career, IU still maintains her position as the No. 1 female solo singer in Korea, each song swept the Top 1 of domestic charts right after its release.
At this year's MAMA, IU was honored with the Top 10 female artist award voted by the audience, but she was not present to receive the award.
In fact, IU has not attended the MAMA awards ceremony for 11 years. The last time she attended was in 2014, when the awards ceremony was also held in Hong Kong (China). That year, IU won the categories of Best Female Artist and Most Favorite Singer.
At the end of 2015, the Kpop fan community was stirred up when Korean media reported that IU would not attend all major music awards ceremonies that year, originating from a conflict with the 2014 MAMA organizers.
According to industry sources, IU was assigned to sing 3 songs, but in the end only received 2 awards. This caused controversy between IU's representative and the MAMA organizers, as they expected more than 2 awards that night.
However, IU's management company quickly corrected, "IU's boycott of awards ceremonies is untrue. We have never received a request for attendance from the organizing committee.
She could not attend the 2015 Melon Music Awards because she was busy attending a fan meeting in China. And for 2015 MAMA, she has not yet received an invitation. Her attendance at other awards ceremonies has not been confirmed as she is currently touring domestically.
In the following years (2017, 2020, 2021, 2024), IU was named Best Actress and won several other awards at MAMA, but she was not present to receive the awards. Instead, she sent a speech video to the organizers to broadcast on the big screen.
In recent years, IU's acting career has been developing, so she seems to focus more on film awards ceremonies, and the number of times attending music awards ceremonies is gradually decreasing.
Although she is an amateur actress, IU has built a solid film career, with many hit works such as Back of the Entertainment, My Uncle, Moonlight Lover, Ghost Hotel, When Life Is for You, the Bamboo...
There is information that IU was paid 500 million won by Netflix for each episode of "When Life Is for You, the Tangerine" but IU denied it. After the resounding success of this drama, IU's future salary may increase even more.
