Suga's return took place without any noise, showing the decline of BTS.
The so called OT7 proved to be empty.
Now the KPop era is ending, it is time to assess the winners and losers of KPop.
I won't list the losers. There are so many, it is not really proper to list them all.
The Greatest Winners of All are , namely, IU, BTS and BlackPink, in order of their debut.
The contributions of BTS and BlackPink towards the advancement of KPop do not have to be recited again.
And the lack of contribution of IU towards the world conquest of KPop also does not have to be recited again.
But, the cold reality is that although IU did not tour the world until her dotage in last year, she made more money than any BTS or BlackPink member, and was as highly regarded as them until last year.
Only the arrival of APT, which ended all previous Kpop arrangement, led the 4.5th gen (and beyond) of KPop to stop paying filial duty to her, someone who was a taker all her life, only taking from the global success of KPop without giving anything in return.
It was the worst combination possible which took place to undermine Kpop significantly and led to the reversal of Kpop's fortune in a lot of places, a combination of the Asian tradition of honoring one's elders, the refusal of Korean domestic music scene which refused to acknowledge the cold fact that it was no longer relevant, and a sheer refusal of melon to not disregard internationally irrelevant singers.
IU has ended, not because of her own will, her long career of ravaging KPop but she was replaced by folks who are even less relevant to KPop than her, like 10cm, Zo Zazz and Hwang Garam, whose names no non-Koreans care about. But it was wrong for KPop to allow someone who contributed nothing to it to rise that high to allow her voice influence KPop.

