North Korea’s favourite pop group has cancelled their first ever worldwide concert and fled China – just days after Kim Jong-un dispatched the girl band to help heal relations with his northern neighbour.
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China’s official Xinhua news agency said the performance could not be staged due to “communication issues at the working level”.
Surprised over North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-Un’s move to abruptly withdraw all women pop band following reported reluctance of top Chinese leaders’ to attend their performances, China today resorted to damage control vowing to step up all round ties with its close ally.
However, the band boarded an Air Koryo flight at around 4 p.m. that day to return to Pyongyang before they could even open their first show.
Free North Korea Radio reported Tuesday the band’s leader, Hyon Song Wol, was mainly responsible for the decision to cancel and confirmed previous reports the dispute centered on North Korean ideology and Kim idolization.
The two sides also reportedly argued over the North’s nuclear weapons program, with the South saying it is an obstacle to better relations.
“It may put a halt on talks about creating a special economic zone between the two countries or carrying out large-scale infrastructure projects within the North”, Cho said. “It seems like they intend to recover the system of the Kim Il Sung era”, Kim Suk-jin, chief of the North Korean Studies Division of Korea Institute for National Unification told NK News.
North Korea has built a cult of personality around the Kim family, which has ruled for three generations and sees any outside criticism or mockery of its leader as an attack on its sovereignty.
“The sudden cancellation of the Moranbong Band performance is a show of bad diplomatic manners, and it will worsen ties between China and the North”, said Cho Bong Hyun, a senior researcher in the region.
The Moranbong Band was formed in 2012 and the all-female group plays their own instruments.
“South Korean authorities wrecked the North-South dialogue and threw away an opportunity to improve relations”.
The Xinhua statement merely said, cryptically, that “China attached high importance to the cultural exchanges with the DPRK, and was ready to continue to work with it to promote the bilateral exchanges and co-operation in culture and all other areas”.
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According to a Chinese government official spilling the tea to South Korea’s Yonhap News, Kim Jong-un was disappointed by a change of plans that would see attendance from a mere lower-ranking official from the Communist Party’s politburo.
