Taiwanese K-pop star Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜) left the recent flag controversy in Taiwan behind as her girl group TWICE on Monday won the Best Female Rookie award at the Philippine K-pop Awards.
Sharing a photograph of members receiving the award on Twitter, the group thanked their fans.
Also on Monday, TWICE’s debut music video, Like OOH-AHH, exceeded 3 million hits on YouTube.
The video, which was released in October last year, topped 1 million hits on YouTube on Nov. 14 and broke 2 million hits on Dec. 22.
On Thursday last week, Chou and her TWICE bandmates were also honored as the best new performer in the music disc division at the 30th Golden Disc Awards held in Seoul.
TWICE is manged by JYP Entertainment Co.
Before the ceremony, JYP Entertainment founder and CEO Park Jin-young said that he hoped TWICE would win the best new performer award. The group did not disappoint their boss.
Chou’s mother and father also attended the award ceremony in Seoul.
Speaking in Mandarin, Chou said: “I love you” to her parents on stage when the girl group received the award.
She then continued in Mandarin with a message to their fans: “We are grateful to all of you. Because of you, we are able to stand here and get such a big prize.”
“During this period, you guys kept encouraging us, pushing us to move on. Thank you very much,” she said, most likely referring to the political controversy in Taiwan.
The controversy was sparked by China-based Taiwanese singer Huang An (黃安), who accused Chou of supporting Taiwanese independence in a series of posts on his Sina Weibo microblog early this month, based on the teenager’s waving of the Republic of China (ROC) national flag on a South Korean TV show late last year.
To smooth over the situation, Chou apologized to her management company JYP Entertainment, as well as Chinese netizens, in a YouTube video on Jan. 15, saying “there is only one China... I have always felt proud of being Chinese.”
The apology infuriated many Taiwanese, who accused JYP of forcing Chou into making the apology.
Ahead of attending the music awards in Seoul, Chou, who seemed to have gradually emerged from the political controversy, appeared on the Korean Broadcasting System show Yu Huiyeol’s Sketchbook and the Munhwa Broadcasting Corp’s Idol Star Athletics Championships.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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