Official Chinese media are neither confirming nor denying grounds for the concerts’ cancellation, with state-run Xinhua News modestly describing the whole kerfuffle as “communication issues at the working level”.
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But North Korea had angered Beijing with its decision to test new ballistic missiles and detonate a nuclear bomb in a secretive underground bunker, despite being urged not to.
Additionally, a concert by a North Korean military chorus was cancelled.
Chinese and Japanese media reports say members of the North Korean band were seen departing for Pyongyang earlier in the day.
The Moranbong Band had been scheduled to perform for three days in Beijing from Saturday, in an apparent sign of warming relations between the two countries.
China is North Korea’s sole major ally.
On the official side, a photo of Song Tao, head of China’s International Liaison Department, shaking hands with Choe Hwi, first deputy director of the North Korean Workers’ Party’s Central Committee – who was in charge of the Moranbong Band’s visit to Beijing – was deleted from the Chinese Communist Party’s homepage.
The Moranbong Band – ordered formed by Kim Jong Un in 2012 as North Korea’s answer to the manufactured, saccharine girl bands that have come out of South Korea in recent years – has become a sensation because it’s so, well, different from the usual music that comes out of the totalitarian regime’s propaganda units.
“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.
Others suggested North Korea would try to improve relations ahead of a historic Party Congress scheduled for May next year.
But instead, the girls were sent scurrying to the airport, according to Chinese news portal Sohu, which added that the performance hall had begun dismantling their stage.
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.
A staff member at the National Theater, where the band was to give the invitation-only performances, said the concerts had been canceled, but did not give a reason. An accompanying North Korean musical troupe, the State Merited Chorus, also cancelled its performances.
North Korea has built a cult of personality around the Kim dynasty, which has ruled for three generations.
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The North Korean band’s arrival in China on Thursday generated great interest among Chinese Internet users. Leading up to the gigs, Chinese netizens had been circulating rumors about a past relationship between Kim and one of the members of the band, a North Korea expert told the Associated Press.
