A petition in Japan calling for K-pop girl group Aespa to be removed from the Japanese New Year’s Eve television show has surpassed 70,000 signatures as of Thursday (Nov 20).

The petition on global petition platform Change.org came amid escalating tension between China and Japan after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi remarked that Japan could intervene if China attacked Taiwan. One of Aespa's members, Ningning, is Chinese.

The rest of the members are Karina and Winter, who are South Korean, and Giselle, who is Japanese.

Ningning previously faced backlash in May 2022 after she shared an image on Bubble, a paid messaging platform used by K-pop idols, of a lamp she had purchased that resembled an atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud. She wrote: "I bought a pretty lamp. What do you think?"

Comments o

See Full Page