For waving Taiwan's flag in "My Little Television," a South Korean variety show, aired in November, 16-year-old Taiwanese K-Pop singer Chou TsuYu is taking the heat from mainland China. The singer actually was just given the flag by the show's producer to introduce the members of TWICE, a Korean Pop group.
After all, member of the group come from different nations. But since Beijing considers Taiwan, or the Republic of China, as only a renegade province of the mainland, Chou harvested the ire of Chinese viewers since the time the TV show was aired, Taiwan was preparing for the January 2016 presidential election.
The contenders were a candidate from the Kuomintang Party and Tsai Ing-wen, the Opposition bet, who won the election on Jan. 16 on an anti-Beijing platform.
Chou, a Taiwanese by birth, moved to South Korea when she became a singer. She was forced to apologize twice to Chinese viewers for waving the flag of her homeland. She said sorry amid cancellation in China by TV stations of schedules for TWICE and performances of other artists of JYP Entertainment, the agency of Chou, reported Yonhapnews.
On Friday, Chou apologized again and the video clip was posted both on YouTube and Weibo, China's microblogging site. Because of the furor her flag-waving caused, the singer said she is suspending activities in China, which showed the power that China exercises even over K-Pop stars.
It was JYP Entertainment that released the 87-second video. ABC reported on Tuesday that JYP's website was brought down by hackers since Saturday. The company said it is working on fixing the problem but does not know how long it would take to restore the portal.