2022 MAMA Awards to kick off in Japan

 The MAMA Awards, the K-pop industry’s biggest annual year-end music awards, will open in Japan on Tuesday.

The two-night awards show will bring a combined 70,000 spectators to the Kyocera Dome Osaka, a baseball stadium located in Osaka, according to CJ ENM, the media and entertainment company that hosts the event.

The show will be streamed live across the world through the music cable channel Mnet’s official YouTube channel.

The logo of the 2022 MAMA Awards, provided by cable TV channel Mnet (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

Actor Park Bo-gum and singer Jeon Somi will co-host the awards ceremony, while former figure skater Kim Yu-na, actors Jung Woo-sung and Hwang Jung-min, and golf legend Pak Se-ri are among those who will present awards.

J-Hope of K-pop supergroup BTS, Korean trot sensation Lim Young-woong, Zico and (G)I-dle will hit the stage to perform. It will become the BTS member’s first performance as a solo artist on a South Korean TV channel.

KARA, one of the most popular girl groups in the late 2000s, will hold its first live performance of tracks off “Move Again,” its first full-group album in more than seven years, on the first night of the ceremony.

On the same night, members of five rising rookie girl groups, including Ive, Kep1er, Le Sserafim and NewJeans, will create mixed teams to perform various hit singles from the groups.

Launched in 1999 as the Mnet Video Music Awards, the country’s first awards ceremony centered on music videos, the event changed its name to the Mnet Asian Music Awards to reflect the shift of its focus to music and began to present awards in other Asian countries in 2009. CJ ENM changed the name again to the MAMA Awards this year under an ambitious plan to develop it into the world’s No. 1 awards ceremony for K-pop music.