Japan’s biggest year-end music festival, ‘Kohaku Uta Gassen‘ will not be featuring any Korean artists this year.

Japanese newspaper Nikkan Sports recently ran a story that said, “NHK‘s ‘Kohaku Uta Gassen’ has formally released the list of participating singers. No Korean artists, including TVXQ, Girls’ Generation, and KARA who participated last year, will be attending. Last year, the 3 teams attended because of the K-Pop boom. They were also active in Japan this year as well, but it seems that the territorial problems over Dokdo and public opinion had an effect on the decision.”

There had already been predictions that no K-pop group would be appearing this year because of the Dokdo controversy, but now it has been confirmed that the show will not be inviting any K-Pop stars.