The year-end festivals in the 3 major tv broadcasting stations in Korea are major events that kpop fans in Korea antisipate and look forward to every year, and often, the most antisipated act is the closing artist, giving the fact that this place is given to the artist who shined the most during last year and achieved a great deal of love and support in the kpop industry, many koreans were therefore thinking that the closing act for SBS Gayo daejeon was without doubts going to be BTS, which, to the surprise of many, wasn't the case(the closing act was non other than EXO, who has had very little to no promotion this year).

Several articles were puplished in Korea regarding this issue, where the reporters tried to speculate as to why this was the case. The most natural explanation was that big hit entertainment is still considered an underdog in the music industry, and whenever major networks have to choose, they stilll end up putting BTS second, giving the huge influence SM entertainment has on the industry, with so many artists from different fields under them.

Fans of both BTS and EXO rushed to defend their artist, which resulted in a huge ongoing fanwar.

Meanwhile, speculations on who the honor of the last preformance will be given to in the upcoming KBS year-end festival are also a hot topic between korean netizens.

Source: https://m.news.naver.com/read.nhn?oid=119&aid=0002302048&sid1=110&backUrl=%2Fhome.nhn&light=off