Performances by North Korea’s all-female propaganda band in Beijing were canceled, an official at a Chinese theater where it was to perform said Saturday, with members of the band abruptly heading back to Pyongyang.
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Kim Jong-un’s hand-selected girl band Moranbong have called off their much-anticipated performance in Beijing amid rumours their show had to be cancelled because of controversy surrounding an affair between the North Korean leader and the group’s lead singer Hyon Song-wol.
Chinese analysts who spoke to Yonhap agreed the Moranbong cancellation would have little influence on bilateral relations, but Yang Xiyu, director of the Foreign Ministry’s Korean Peninsula affairs office, said the leaders of China and North Korea still need to meet, and that it is hard to ascertain when that could take place.
The band, formed in 2012 and apparently handpicked by Kim Jong-un, is composed of svelte women who can sing, dance and perform electric and classical instruments.
Band members arrived at Beijing’s airport in North Korean Embassy vehicles on Saturday afternoon, and departed aboard an Air Koryo jet, Chinese news website sina.com reported. Performances by a North Korean choral group that were on the same program were also canceled.
The concerts were thought to be a good indication of improved relations between the two countries, which are nominally allies but have experienced strained ties ever since Kim took over from his late father in 2011.
“China pays great attention to cultural exchanges with North Korea and is willing along with North Korea to keeping pushing cooperation forward on all levels, including cultural exchanges”, Hong added, without elaborating.
The concert in Beijing was billed as a “friendship performance” by North Korea’s state-run KCNA agency, which praised the “worldwide stylish band” as “the first standard-bearer on the ideological and cultural front”.
Chinese news portal Sohu said the women had flown home and the stage they were due to perform on had been dismantled. “Let’s build our land into a rich country and paradise, let’s use these times to educate ourselves, staying up all night learning, creating new miracles through invention and accomplishments”.
“Following North Korea’s sudden cancellation of the Moranbong Band, we can not rule out the possibility that Pyongyang and Beijing’s relations may become estranged again”, a South Korean defense official said during a meeting of top military officials held in Seoul on Monday. Band members and the envoy did not respond to questions from reporters.
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In October, Liu Yunshan, the fifth-highest-ranking official in the Chinese Communist Party, visited Pyongyang and met with Kim, the most senior Chinese official to do so.
