143 The Night of Kohaku

There was once a time in Korea when families and relatives would gather at the end of the year, eat delicious food, and wait for the New Year's Eve bell to ring.

Whenever that happened, rather than turning on an entertainment awards show where the adults would inevitably have divided interests, they usually put on a year-end music festival filled with songs that livened up the mood and that even the children knew.

However, for various reasons, that period of nationwide unity passed in Korea, and it has long since devolved into promotional stages for idols, except for a few performances.

By contrast, Kohaku Uta Gassen has remained a program watched by the entire nation in Japan at the end of the year, regardless of generation.

Kohaku's ratings reach the mid-thirties at the end of the year, and when viewers on various platforms are included, more than fifty million people watch it at once.

There was a reason Korean idols abandoned Korea's year-end stages and dashed to Japan whenever they received an invitation to Kohaku.

There might be some differences between generations, but once again, the person everyone was most eager to see at this year's Kohaku was Mikansei.

Mikansei was the artist behind White noise, which had the year's highest streaming count, and a young genius who had won the Japanese public's fervent support.

It was only natural for Mikansei's performance to attract people's attention.

It was the same in Korea...