The year-end awards are often a big deal for artists and their fandom because it is an event in which artists are recognized for their hard work for the past year.

The awards are often given based on data such as the number of album sales, the number of streams, and fandom votes. That is why various fandoms of different artists band together to make sure their favorite artists are able to win an award at the end of the year.

Recently, international K-pop fans found that a certain idol group fandom was using VPNs to increase the chance of their belove artist winning an award.

According to one K-netizen, "There's commotion in the international fandom because of MAMA voting; BTS fans found out that Stray Kids fans were using VPN to get the group to number 1 so BTS fans are reporting this." Because of this, international fans have begun a feud online. 

K-netizens are also giving their two cents on this matter and commented in an online community, "I think they did the same thing last year, it's nothing new. We just hope MAMA will filter them out," "It's not a simple fight for number 1 but they are taking the shares of votes so there might be teams (groups) that don't even make it to the top 10 unfairly," "They always get good grades only at MAMA," "But Stray Kids always had a bigger fandom overseas. I'm writing a comment because this just feels unjust. They won The Fact award with just votings too and their international fans are diligent with voting that's all," and "It's the international fans who are using VPN too, lol."