The Baekryeong Art Center had apologized for the cancellation, saying they weren’t acting on their own volition: ‘The Ministry of Education insisted.’
A South Korean court has ruled to allow Shen Yun Performing Arts to continue a planned two-day performance amid Beijing’s disruption efforts, handing a win to the group that has, for years, been a target of the regime’s global repression efforts.
The hosting venue, Kangwon National University, greenlit the New York classical Chinese dance company’s application to perform at its Baekryeong Art Center on April 1, only to walk back on the agreement after the Chinese embassy voiced a complaint.
The university stated that its decision to cancel the show had to do with the public interests of the school. As the university is a national institution under the country’s Ministry of Education, it’s in a position to “directly and indirectly represent the official position of the Republic of Korea,” thereby escalating the matter into a “diplomatic issue,” stated a letter from the university, obtained by The Epoch Times.
The center further said they made the decision out of public interest concerns, citing the roughly 500 Chinese-national students studying at the center who it claimed could stage protests, potentially leading to clashes, should the performance go on as scheduled.
The Chuncheon District Court on April 30 sided with the show presenter, describing the university’s contract cancellation as an “abuse of discretionary power.”
Shen Yun, the court noted, has held shows in South Korea since 2007, holding two successful runs at Baekryeong Art Center in 2017 without any incidents.
With no solid evidence backing its claims, the school’s stated concerns about potential clashes are vague and difficult to justify, the court said in the judgement, calling the decision “illegal.”
It further noted that the cancellation happened just 20 days ahead of the scheduled performance on May 6 and 7, with nearly two thirds of the tickets sold. Calling off the performance at this point would make it hard for the show organizers to recover their financial and reputational damage, the judge said.
The ruling marks a breakthrough for Shen Yun in South Korea, which has faced constant pressure from its top trading partner, China, to stop the arts group from performing.
Shen Yun tours all over the world—but it cannot perform in China.
Founded in 2006 in part by artists who fled Chinese Communist Party (CCP) repression, Shen Yun has grown, over the nearly two past decades, into eight companies of equal size that tour globally with a live orchestra each year. The group showcases classical Chinese dance under the tagline “China before communism,” with some pieces also featuring stories of the CCP’s persecution targeting Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that has suffered an extensive persecution campaign in China over the past 26 years.
Chinese diplomats and people believed to be linked with them have used political and economic coercion to undermine Shen Yun’s global performances. The nonprofit group, Falun Dafa Information Center, has documented over 130 such instances over the years.
Recently, the campaign appears to have intensified into a more disturbing form. In just over a year, the arts group has reported dozens of threatening emails detailing acts of violence such as threatening to bomb performers and audiences in a bid to see shows canceled. None of the threats have resulted in actual action. Taiwanese authorities who investigated the matter said they suspect a research entity under Chinese telecom giant Huawei, which has links to China’s military, is the culprit for some of the emails.
Ahead of the second day of Shen Yun’s run at the Baekryeong Art Center, Shen Yun’s emcee Leeshai Lemish, who has tracked these incidents for years, said he was heartened to see “a South Korean court upholding the country’s law and pushing back against CCP pressure.”
“CCP transnational repression is rampant worldwide but in South Korea, it has an especially long and well-documented history of targeting Shen Yun. For years, the PRC embassy and consulates there have been trying to cancel Shen Yun shows, and too many times, they have succeeded,” he told The Epoch Times.
But the court ruling shows that “the CCP can only succeed if it can co-opt local governments, courts, and theaters” to follow its command, he added.
“When individuals stand firm and do what they believe is right, as we see now in South Korea, the CCP is powerless to do anything.”
He sees it as a “wonderful sign that Korean people have had enough of Beijing telling them what art they can and cannot watch.”
Lemish recalled a similar incident in 2016 at the KBS Hall. The owner, South Korea’s national broadcasting company, was one of the few foreign channels that Beijing allowed in the Chinese market at the time. It aborted four planned Shen Yun shows abruptly upon receiving a Chinese embassy letter warning the theater against letting the show go on. Like in the Baekryeong Art Center, thousands of tickets were booked at the time.
Baekryeong Art Center, after canceling the show, apologized and said they weren’t acting on their own volition.
“We tried our best, but the school and the Ministry of Education insisted on cancellation, so we had no choice but to cancel,” a staffer had told Shen Yun presenters, according to an email copy The Epoch Times reviewed.
Lemish noted how repeatedly, South Korean government-affiliated entities and theaters have acknowledged Beijing’s intervention but cited public interests to make the case for giving into the Chinese communist regime.
“I think what we’re seeing now is more and more people in South Korea and around the world realizing that the CCP’s interests do not align with theirs at all, and that they need to protect their own rights and freedoms in the face of CCP pressure,” he said. “I think as a bonus, they also find that they feel good doing that.”