Okay-pop woman group aespa has been pulled into the deepening diplomatic dispute between China and Japan, as a rising variety of Japanese viewers name for the elimination of Chinese language member Ningning from NHK’s year-end music program “Kōhaku Uta Gassen.”
A petition posted on Monday to Change.org urges NHK to cancel aespa’s scheduled look. The petition shortly gained momentum, surpassing 70,000 signatures inside two days.
Supporters argue that Ningning’s previous social media submit — the place she shared a backstage picture that includes a light-weight that some critics stated resembled a nuclear mushroom cloud — reveals “an absence of historic consciousness.”
“‘Kōhaku’ is a crucial nationwide broadcast,” one commenter wrote, insisting that permitting her to carry out would “harm the victims of Hiroshima.” One other stated, “Somebody who praised a mushroom-cloud-shaped mild shouldn’t seem on a program watched by the entire nation.”
Ningning’s submit from 2022 beforehand sparked criticism in Japan however didn’t result in formal complaints. Nevertheless, this 12 months’s petition comes amid sharply heightened political rigidity following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks suggesting attainable army involvement in a Taiwan battle.
Beijing condemned the assertion as interference and has since tightened restrictions on Japanese journey, cultural content material, and leisure releases.
Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Day by day reported that aespa has change into “some of the seen cultural victims” of the standoff, noting that whether or not the group in the end performs may function a “sign of the diplomatic ambiance.”
This text is translated by generative AI and edited by The Korea Instances.
