Last month, South Korean boyband BTS was
heavily criticised in China after its leader made remarks about
the Korean War, and some BTS-related products were removed from
Chinese websites.
Fu Bao, the first panda to be born in South Korea was introduced
to the public last week. Fu Bao's parents arrived in 2016 from
China's Sichuan province, the home of giant pandas, as part of
China's "panda diplomacy".
BLACKPINK included footage of the band members holding the baby
panda in a teaser clip aired on YouTube earlier this month.
Some Chinese local media and online commentators denounced the
girl group for touching Fu Bao with bare hands and while wearing
too much make-up, saying it threatened the health of the young
cub. The comments set off a storm on Weibo, China's version of
Twitter.
As of Tuesday, there were millions of views and 55,000 posts on
hashtag "Blackpink touched panda cub wrongly" on Weibo.
The full episode was to have been broadcast on Nov 7 and has
been postponed, according to the group's music label, YG
Entertainment, although it defended the production.
"When BLACKPINK met the baby panda, all members wore hygiene
gloves, masks and protective clothing ... hands and shoes were
disinfected at every transition," the agency said in a
statement.
Hashtags "BLACKPINK" and "Panda" were trending on South Korean
Twitter as well over the weekend. Some South Korean social media
users pushed back at the Chinese criticism, urging South Korea
to "return the pandas" or arguing that "pandas are not ours and
it is too expensive to raise them anyway".
(Reporting by Sangmi Cha, additional reporting by Beijing bureau
and Soohyun Mah in Seoul; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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