Mega K-pop stars, BTS, announced Friday the cancellation of giant concerts scheduled for April in Seoul, where the number of cases of coronavirus has crossed the 2,000 mark in South Korea, the country most affected after the China.
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The boy band, currently one of the biggest musical phenomena in the world, had four dates scheduled at the Seoul Olympic Stadium to promote his latest album, Map of the Soul: 7 .
In total, more than 200,000 groupies should have massed over four evenings in the compound that hosted the 1988 Games, said in a statement Big Hit Entertainment, the agent of the seven boys with a neat look.
Big Hit Entertainment explained that this cancellation was "inevitable" because it is "impossible at this stage to predict the scale of the epidemic" , which generates a lot of logistical uncertainty for the organization of the concerts, but also for the spectators . "We have to take into account the health and safety of the hundreds of thousands of spectators and artists," said Big Hit.
BTS (abbreviation of Bangtan Sonyeondan, which means "Boy Scouts resistant to bullets") is a worldwide musical phenomenon. It is the first K-pop group to have reached the peak of sales in the United States and in Great Britain and chained sold out concerts in Los Angeles, Chicago or London, or even ignited in June a Stade de France completely full.
Map of the Soul: 7 is the South Korean album that was the most ordered in presales, since four million copies had been purchased before its release in stores last week.
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Many cultural and sporting events have been canceled or postponed in South Korea because of the epidemic, including matches in the national football championship or the World Team Table Tennis Championships.
Hyundai plant shutdown
The United States, of which 28,500 soldiers are stationed on the peninsula, and its South Korean ally have postponed their next joint military exercises. Hyundai Motor, the world's fifth largest automaker including its subsidiary Kia, has suspended the operations of one of its factories in Ulsan (southeast), one of whose employees had tested positive for coronavirus, reports the South Korean agency Yonhap.
The group had already suspended production a few weeks ago due to a shortage of Chinese spare parts, already a consequence of the epidemic.
Seoul reported on 256 new cases on Friday, bringing its total infected to 2,022, the highest death toll for a single country after China.
More than 90% of new cases have been registered in Daegu, the country's fourth city, and in the neighboring province of North Gyeongsang. The death toll is expected to continue to climb as authorities have begun testing more than 275,000 worshipers of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, an organization described by its critics as a sect, which is directly linked to half of the cases of contamination in the country.
The coronavirus epidemic spread like wildfire through the ranks of this movement from one of its followers, a 61-year-old woman identified as the patient 31.
She began to suffer from fever on February 10 and attended at least four Shincheonji offices in Daegu, where the organization's headquarters are located, before being diagnosed with the virus.
68,000 people tested
Daegu mayor Kwon Young-jin said the total number of cases in his city could reach 3,000, according to Yonhap. The streets of this city of 2.5 million inhabitants have been deserted for several days, many shops and restaurants having closed their doors. On Friday, the masks were again widely available, according to AFP journalists.
Authorities have multiplied the instructions, urging residents to stay at home if they develop symptoms. But the 12th world economy does not envision a cordon cordon around the city, as China was able to do for Wuhan, the agglomeration from which the epidemic started in December.
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South Korea has a state-of-the-art medical system, a free press and a very strong culture of transparency, which observers say also explains the high numbers of contaminations. Over 68,000 people have already been tested.
