Korea cancelled concert after China requested changes to repertoire: RFA

A staff member at the National Theater, where they were to perform, said the concerts had been canceled, with no reason given.

On Saturday, North Korea pulled out of cross-border talks after South Korea said it refused the country’s demand to resume a tourism project that once provided Pyongyang with tens of millions of dollars each year.

Some observers believe that the performances had to be canceled due to the band and chorus being ordered home in connection with this.

North Korea’s state media has published no reports about the cancellation.

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.

Xinhua said the performance was cancelled because of “communication issues at the working level”.

Some media speculated that NK officials were offended that China’s president, Xi Jinping, did not plan to attend, and the Daily Beast reported that Kim Jong-un himself called off the performance “in order to quiet rumors of his past sexual relationship with Hyon Song-wol”, the leader of Moranbang.

News reports speculated that Pyongyang was dissatisfied that China had made a decision to send a low-ranking official to the Moranbong concert instead of a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau, the Chinese government’s top leadership body.

The singers and the musicians, sometimes wearing skirts cut well above the knee, are known for fancy dance steps and their performances have been considered modern and seductive by North Korean standards.

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.

Sun said that if a state leader watched the show it would be interpreted as Beijing tolerating, if not endorsing, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, contradicting its official stand.

Although North Korea is still recovering from the severe crisis in the 1990s, construction of infrastructure and economic activities picked up since Kim Jong-un assumed power in 2011.

“China wants North Korea to be more open”, Su added.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said that if the cancellation is related to news stories about the band’s leader, “There might have been prior consent between the two sides”. In October, high-ranking Chinese official Liu Yunshan visited Pyongyang, and this visit by the Moranbong Band was widely publicized in the Chinese press.