Given that she was placed close to #1 despite of releasing no songs of her own in 2022, Lee Jieun would be flexing her muscles to advance into the KPop arena once again in order to seize its initiative now BTS is out of town.
Right now, the major acts of 4th Gen , IVE, NewJeans, aespa, LeSserafim, Gidle, Kep1er, NMixx and others I might have missed, are putting each other as rivals and they are competing like hell.
Lee Jieun traditionally attacked in Mar-May timeline. She never promoted during summer so after May is over the Great Threat against the 4th Gen will probably have passed, but she was never really well known for mercy to newer generations.
It is commendable that no 4th gen acts, other than Itzy which is at the borderline between 3rd and 4th, bothered to show up at IU's Palette, which now mostly features o2lder acts.
I have written for a very long time about how an IU-ruled KPop would be like. For the first time since her debut she has a very good chance of seizing the initiative of KPop, which she will abuse like hell.
All of my posts about IU re-seizing KPop were seen as troll posts, but next year will probably prove me correct.
How the entire KPop world will cope with this dreadful prospect is an entire topic by itself.
I am sure ex-IZone members, who are now in IVE and Le Sserafim, would remember how IU played IZOne like pebbles in the sand. Whenever IZOne made a comeback, IU followed them like plague and made sure to humiliate them.
What act will be unlucky enough to fight IU in 2023 is not known. Looks like NewJeans , by promoting early next year, will escape her blunt.
IU's undying desire to destroy all of KPop's gains, return everything back to 1990 as if nothing happened and end all the progress is going to manifest itself in earnest in 2023 when she is 30 (actually 1,344) years old, and as Kurtz in the book Heart of Darkness left these final words, I have to say that it is
"The Horror! The Horror!"
