Chou Tzu-yu forced to apologise to Beijing

If you think that UK pop stars are a little disconnected from the struggles of everyday people, you might want to redirect your attention to South Korea, where a 16 year-old K-Pop star has been forced to read out a cringing apology to the Chinese government. But, happily, Chou Tzu-yu reads the note in such a way as to make it clear she's totally disassociated from the content.

Here's what happened: Chou is from Taiwan, and she went on TV in South Korea with her band Twice to do a song or two. During the course of her performance, she waved the Taiwanese flag about a bit.

Cue a massive shit storm.

The end result? Her panicky, pissweak management forced her to read out a prepared statement apologising to the lovely people of the Chinese government. That a K-Pop star should be forced to dance attendance on the Beijing regime is no surprise - our Chancellor and Prime Minister regularly submit themselves to lick buttholes in the hope of getting a few Yuan shoved into their hands.

But Chung managed to signal so much distance from the words she was being forced to mouth, she managed to create the least authentic pop star video since Sam Smith did the Bond theme:

It's hard to think how she could have distanced herself further from the bit of paper - perhaps if she'd have pretended the words were being dictated to her by a sock-puppet, or maybe made the "Whatevs" sign at the end of each sentence.

The funny thing is, her flag waving and the breeze it created may have helped swung the Taiwanese elections this week against the pro-China Vichyesque regime, and in favour of Tsai Ing-wen's independence party.

She's 16 and making pop music. She's also bringing geopolitical conflict to a head. What have you done today, Ellie Goulding?