Trot singer Lim Young-woong, Jimin of BTS and virtual boy band Plave have become the first winners of K-pop fan voting service Bugs Favorite's polls for favorite artist of the year, best challenger of the year and rising star of the year, respectively.


Bugs Favorite is a service created by the music streaming platform Bugs in collaboration with the JoongAng Ilbo, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily.

The service revealed the results of its first batch of polls on Friday, which took place from Nov. 30 to Wednesday. The winners will be featured on a massive digital signage at Parnas Media Tower in Gangnam District, southern Seoul and Lim Young-woong will also get a full-page ad in the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper.

Fan votes accounted for 80 percent of the final score.

The remaining 20 percent is determined by the percent of each contestant's music streams during that period that were played through the Bugs music service.

That number is divided by five and added to the final score.

Lim Young-woong won the 2023 Favorite Artist category with a final score of 45.2 percent. He received 1,068,073 votes plus 3.8 percent from streaming.

He will be featured on the signage from Saturday to Jan. 19 and have his full-page run on Wednesday's edition of the JoongAng Ilbo.

BTS's Jimin secured second place with 842,117 votes and 0.2 percent in streaming, getting a final score of 32.9 percent. BTS's Jungkook took third place with 3.9 percent.

In the 2023 Rising Star category, virtual boy band Plave took the top spot. Plave achieved the feat with 117,549 votes and 5.6 percent in streaming as the first virtual boy band to rank No. 1 on the Favorite service. The tribute video celebrating Plave's top position will be played at the Coex Media Tower in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, from Saturday to Jan. 19.

Second place in the category went to Riize, who received the final score of 17.3 percent, with 9,404 votes and 13.3 percent in streaming. ZeroBaseOne secured third place with 14.6 percent as the final score, with 34,119 votes.

BTS's Jimin won the Best Challenger of the Year category thanks to his "Ppoppippo" challenge video. He won a total of 136,647 votes and one percent in streaming, earning a final score of 59.8 percent.

Jimin's tribute video will be seen from Saturday to Jan. 19 on a different facade of the Coex Media Tower, facing Daechi-dong.

Jungkook's "Smoke Challenge" came in second with 35,738 votes and 16.3 percent in streaming, getting in a final score of 31.7 percent. Twice's Jihyo ranked third with her "Fast Forward" challenge, garnering a final score of 1.9 percent.

To find out more about Lim Young-woong, Plave and Jimin, visit Celeb Confirmed!

BY LEE CHAE-MIN [lee.chaemin1@joongang.co.kr]