Boy band NCT Dream won the Grand Award at the 32nd Seoul Music Awards held on Thursday at the KSPO Dome in Olympic Park, Songpa District, southern Seoul.

“It is an honor to start a new year with such a prestigious award; thank you very much. We also want to thank our chief producer Lee Soo-man [founder of the band's agency SM Entertainment], and our colleagues at SM Entertainment. We would like to share this award with [bandmates] Mark and Hae-chan who are not here at the moment with us.”

Boy band BTS, the Winner of the Grand Award for four consecutive years from 2018 to 2022, won the Best Album Award, Main Award and Idol Plus Best Star Award this year. BTS did not attend the ceremony, but the band's leader RM thanked ARMY (BTS's fandom) in his acceptance speech delivered through a video.

The Best Song Award went to girl group IVE with the song "Love Dive" (2022), while boy band TNX, girl groups NewJeans and Le Sserafim were awarded the Rookies of the Year Awards.

Other notable winners included singer Psy, who won the World Best Artist Award; girl group Kara, which recently released its 15th-anniversary album and won the K-pop Special Award; and singer BoA who won the Legend Artist Award.


A total of 16 artists took home the main awards. They were six girl groups — aespa, (G)I-DLE, Blackpink, Red Velvet, IVE and GOT the beat; four boy bands — BTS, Stray Kids, NCT Dream and Seventeen; two trot singers — Kim Ho-joong and Lim Young-woong and four solo artists — Psy, Kang Daniel, Zico and Taeyeon of Girls’ Generation.

BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]