Seoul Music Awards 2023

With KARA being honoured with the K-pop special award and BTS winning Best Album, here is everything you need to know about the 32nd Seoul Music Awards.

After NCT DREAM won the Daesang at the 2023 Seoul Music Awards, Sports Seoul published an exclusive interview with the K-pop group which suggests that the group knew about receiving this award well in advance of the ceremony. People are claiming that the Seoul Music Awards is giving preferential treatment to the fans and artists of SM Entertainment. However, a couple of days before the ceremony, the fandoms of NCT DREAM, GOT the Beat, and SHINee’s Minho received the notice that there are designated fan sections for these artists which are available for reservation. [NCT DREAM](https://www.pinkvilla.com/topic/nct) took home a Daesang while [IVE](https://www.pinkvilla.com/entertainment/watch-ive-members-are-all-about-deep-feelings-love-alluring-and-groovy-mv-after-1180335) won the Best Song Award. One user tweeted that the Seoul Music Awards should be clearer about the criteria that they follow as the results were quite disappointing. The article was later edited to replace the first Daesang of 2023 with the first award show of 2023 but the damage was already done as published copies were also widely discussed. [BTS ](https://www.pinkvilla.com/topic/bts)won the highest number of awards that included the Best Album Award, Bongsang Award, and Idol Plus Best Artist award at the 32nd Seoul Music Awards, while KARA was awarded the K-pop special award for their first full group comeback in seven years. The single track released by Jin gained attention and praise at a global level. While ARMY was happy that BTS had won the Bongsang Award at the 2023 Seoul Music Awards, many fans were quite angry as BTS’ Jin and his single track ‘The Astronaut’ did not get any award. On the other hand, Discovery of the Year, Special Jury Award, Band Award, and Best Performance are a hundred per cent determined by the panellist's input. The winners are decided by the albums and songs that are released from January to December 2022 with the criteria of thirty per cent sales, forty per cent panellists, and thirty per cent online voting. Various K-pop stars took to the red carpet prior to the awards ceremony, including NCT Dream, KARA, (G)I-DLE, IVE, TAN, TNX, Lapillus, and more.