SEVENTEEN, the K-pop superstar, will attend the 2022 Asian Artist Awards in Japan. Pledis Entertainment, on the other hand, revealed that group members THE8 and JUN would be unable to attend the award event. According to the agency’s official statement:
“SEVENTEEN members JUN and THE 8 will be unable to attend the “2022 Asia Artist Awards IN JAPAN” owing to pre-arranged individual schedules. As a result, 11 members will participate in the event.”
The 2022 award event, which recognizes Asian talent in music, television, and cinema, will be held on December 13 at Nagoya’s Nippon Gaishi Hall. THE BOYZ, Stray Kids, ITZY, TREASURE, IVE, Kep1er, LE SSERAFIM, and NewJeans are among the other K-pop musicians performing at the event. CARATS speculates on the true reason behind SEVENTEEN’s The8 and Jun’s absence from the forthcoming award presentation.
junhao will not attend AAA due to individual schedules arranged in advance! pic.twitter.com/iJWpZHPPQE
— hana ❁ (@min9yu_tttop) December 11, 2022
After Pledis made the revelation on social media, CARATs, the group’s official fans, speculated about the two members’ personal schedules. Because Jun (Wen Junhui) and The8 (Xu Minghao) are both Chinese, people hypothesized that the true reason they missed the event in Japan was that December 13 is memorial day in China.
One supporter wrote:
“I guess it’s because 12.13 is the official commemoration day of the Nanjing Massacre, and they can’t play in Japan because of that.”
Another admirer commented:
“December 13 is a Chinese day to memorialize the victims of the Nanjing Massacre, a day when entertainment is prohibited in China, and the victims of this war were slaughtered by the Japanese, thus visiting Japan on this day is inappropriate.”
Though fans were disappointed that the whole group would not be attending the event, CARATs commended Pledis Entertainment for the sensible move, which would otherwise have produced problems for the Chinese members.
At LA3C, SEVENTEEN performs a powerful performance.
On December 10, 2022, the thirteen-member K-pop group made history by playing at the first LA3C, or Los Angeles, Capital of Culture and Creativity, event. The one-hour performance evolved into a mini-concert for the band, as they performed some of their best songs to tremendous applause from the CARATs in the crowd. They performed HOT, Left and Right, Very Nice, and a holiday version of their English track Darl+ing.
Fans were particularly taken by SEVENTEEN’s team leaders’ performance of Cheers, during which dance team leader Hoshi dazzled the audience with some crazy gestures and lines from the stage. Meanwhile, the Don’t Wanna Cry vocalists, together with HYBE’s chairman Bang Si-hyuk, received the Culture Ambassador Award on the opening day of the event. The prize highlighted their efforts to integrate Korean and Asian cultures into American society.
