Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
D-Crunch had been set to perform at the anniversary concert in Kuwait recently, but that was scrapped abruptly.
The band had performed in Abu Dhabi on October 24 as part of Korea Festival 2019. However, a more recent performance scheduled at the 40th Anniversary Concert of Korea-Kuwait Diplomatic Relations was stopped from taking place at the last minute. The group’s nine members took the stage and apologised for being unable to perform. “Sorry everyone for not showing you our performances,” a member of the band told the crowd, who could be heard cheering. “We will come back soon, we will see you soon again. Thank you so much everyone.”
While the Korean ambassador to Kuwait talked about the event, he did not mention the cancellation.
TV personality Yousef Al Saleh explained what he witnessed at the event, mainly expressing confusion at how things went.
“You can tell the Kuwaiti crowd were there for the K-Pop. It was an age range between 14 years old to 50s or 60s. It was a huge demographic. And people were there for D-Crunch — you can tell, some girls had posters, they wore the t-shirts. There was no sign that it was going to be cancelled. The [rest of the] concert goes on without a hitch. It was excellent.” But when it came time for D-Crunch, a Korean represantative came on stage to deliver an announcement. “He said the Kuwaiti crowd has been amazing. You guys are one of the best audiences we’ve ever had. Unfortunately, we had to cut the show short. And this is just something that is out of our hands,” recalled Al Saleh. Then, the band came on stage to apologise. To Al Saleh, they seemed to be out of sorts. “You can tell that D-crunch, physically, they were upset. They were really devastated,” he said. After the band delivered a short speech, the lights went on and the event was abruptly over, according Al Saleh. “I was 100 percent surprised. We were all dumbstruck, because when we were there, it was like, ‘OK, open the lights and leave.’ Why? Just give me an explanation. The band was there,” he said.
Video from the venue seemed to verify this.
d-crunch came out to apologize to the fans for being unable to perform tonight. the member beside dylan (i’m sorry i’m not very familiar with the members) was crying and it broke my heart so much!! #DCRUNCH #D_CRUNCH #DIANA #디크런치 #디아나 pic.twitter.com/gE33Il5bEe
— ☼ ʜ ¹²⁷ ☽ (@svnandmoons) October 27, 2019
For whatever reason, people there also started to chant “B-T-S“.
Regardless, as the witness recounted, there was no reason given by anybody for the cancellation, and most in official positions seemed to want to forget it existed.
Well according to a report, the reason was because they went against “public morals” of the country.
The online Kuwaiti publication Al Majlliss published a video of the group reportedly heading to the airport at dawn on Twitter. The publication wrote: “A number of sources suggest that the ban took place after several of the band members appeared in circumstances against public morals of Al Kuwait during their previous performances and songs.” However, these claims could not be independently verified by tabloid!
There was also speculation that the specific reason was rumors of them either being gay or appearing gay being spread.
According to Foochia.com, some suggested the reason behind D-Crunch tears was the heckling by the public, who were calling them as gay. They were reportedly shocked by the situation which they had never experienced before. The decision of the Minister of Mass Media and Information comes after inaccurate information that all members of the band are gay.
Seems relevant to point out that one can get up to six years in prison not only for engaging in homosexual acts, but also for essentially looking gay.
It’s worth noting that nothing has been confirmed and most involved appear content to pretend it never happened, so we may never get an explanation (not that anything released at this point would necessarily be truthful anyway, but still), but it certainly looks terrible at the moment and it’s hard not to feel bad for D-Crunch members who were there to perform for fans and left crying due to circumstances out of their control.
