The selection committee for the "2011 Korean Pop Music Awards" revealed why KARA, SNSD, and many others were excluded from nominations for various categories. The committee held a press conference at the Rachel Carson Hall on the morning of January 25th, the committee revealed their nominees for a total of 25 different categories. With artists like 2NE1, miss A, Taeyang, Hot Potato, and many others up for an award, many fans were thrown off by the fact that KARA and SNSD were missing from the list. When asked whether SNSD and KARA were purposely excluded from the nominations, Park Eun Seok replied, "There's a lot of controversy over us not choosing popular artists for a popular music awards show, but I think that there's a bit of confusion over the definition of 'popular music'. Popular music does not mean the public's music. We consider the music in its entirety, without taking the level of awareness the song has, or its public and commercial achievement." He continued, "We did not exclude SNSD and KARA on purpose. We did consider them, and although they made it to the finals, our results showed that miss A and 2NE1 made it further than SNSD and KARA. As you know, an awards ceremony judges the performances of others. Up until the final nominations, girl groups had to compete to get there. We did not dismiss anyone based on the premise of having won an award last year. At the finals, results showed that miss A managed to make it while the others didn't." Kim Chang Nam agreed by adding, "We only took KARA's music and promotion into consideration. Their issue with their agency does not affect being nominated for our awards." Choi Ji Sun stated, "In the case of girl group idol music, genre plays a large role. In my personal opinion, idol music was fresh up until last year, but it was a bit lacking this year. miss A and 2NE1 both made a considerable amount of achievements worthy of attention, which is why they were included in the nominations." The awards ceremony will be held on February 23rd. Source: Star News via Nate