Project K

Project K is a seven-member boy band in Myanmar that formed in 2016. The septet — composed of Bhone Nay Lin, Bhone Nay Min, Chan Myae Oo, Hein Yar, Min Khant Hein, William Tun, and Ye Yint Thaw — is known for their dancing and singing abilities, and fashion.[1] Until the debut of ALFA in 2019, Project K was Myanmar's only K-pop style boy band.[2] The K in "Project K" stands for "king," "Korea," and "K-pop."[3] The group is known for incorporating traditional Burmese dance styles to their dance performances, and has amassed as significant social media following as a result.[3][4]

For other uses, see K Project (disambiguation).
Project K
OriginMyanmar
GenresBurmese pop
Years active2016 (2016)–present
WebsiteProject K on Facebook
Members
  • Bhone Nay Lin
  • Bhone Nay Min
  • Chan Myae Oo
  • Hein Yar
  • Min Khant Hein
  • William Tun
  • Ye Yint Thaw

Career

Three dance crews — Triplet (comprising William Tun, Phone Nay Min and Phone Nay Lin), Jade Dragon (comprising Htet Phone Naing, Min Khant Hein, and Hein Yar), and a solo dancer (Ye Yint Thaw) — joined forces in August 2016 to form Project K, in the lead-up to the 2016 K-pop Cover Dance Festival.[3] Project K first gained traction after winning 2nd place at said competition in Seoul, South Korea on 8 October 2016.[5] In April 2017, the group's members all ordained as Buddhist monks, to mark Thingyan, the Burmese New Year.[6]

Project K garnered praise from Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, who considered herself a fan of the group.[7][8] She noted the group's ability to blend traditional Burmese dance styles into contemporary dance routines during her remarks at the 2018 Myanmar Entrepreneurship Summit, held in December 2018.[9] During the 2019 ASEAN-Korea Summit, she asked Moon Jae-in to allow Project K to train in South Korea.[10] In December 2019, filming commenced for a television series, Before and After (ပြောင်းလဲခြင်းနောက်ကွယ်), starring Project K, Thinzar Wint Kyaw, and Wa Shwe Nwe Thway Win.[11]

In February 2020, Project K covered Hlwan Moe's classic Burmese language song, "That Yangon Lad is Me" (ရန်ကုန်သားလေးကျွန်တော်), at Yangon City FM's 18th Annual Music Awards.[12] In August 2020, the group performed in a traditional Burmese monsoon season theatrical show (မိုးရာသီသဘင်ပွဲ), headlined by traditional actors Han Za Moe Win and Tin Maung San Min Win.[13] In September 2020, in the lead-up to the 2020 Myanmar general election, Project K released an election song, dubbed "Choose With Your Own Hands" (ကိုယ့်လက်နှင့်ရွေးချယ်), in support of the National League for Democracy's electoral campaign.[14] The song's music video was directed by Kyi Phyu Shin.[14]

In September 2020, the band traveled to South Korea to train for a month in the lead-up to performing at the Asia Song Festival, held in October 2020 in Gyeongju.[15][16] Their performance at the 2020 Asia Song Festival was marred with some controversy, with Burmese netizens and religious hardliners criticizing the band for dancing on CGI images of Shwedagon Pagoda.[17][18] Upon their return to Myanmar, the group was met with protestors at the Yangon International Airport.[19] Project K issued a swift apology on Facebook, reiterating that all the members were Buddhist, and that the group members had not known they would perform atop images of the sacred pagoda during rehearsals.[17]

In December 2020, South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism requested 1.5 billion won in funding to support the K-pop training of Asian artists, citing Project K.[20] The National Assembly ultimately approved 400 million won to fund the program.[20]

Members
  • Bhone Nay Lin (ဘုန်းနေလင်း)
  • Bhone Nay Min (ဘုန်းနေမင်း)
  • Chan Myae Oo (ချမ်းမြေ့ဦး)
  • Hein Yar (ဟိဏ်းရာ)
  • Min Khant Hein (မင်းခန့်ဟိန်း)
  • William Tun (ဝီလျှံထွန်း)
  • Ye Yint Thaw (ရဲရင့်သော်)

Discography

Albums
  • The Beginning (2017)

Singles
  • "Storyteller" (2018)
  • "Worry About You"  (2018)
  • "Conversation" (2018)
  • "Never Fall Down" (2018)
  • "Wrong Wish" (ဆုတောင်းမှား) (2019)
  • "That Yangon Lad is Me" (ရန်ကုန်သားလေးကျွန်တော်) (2020)
  • "Choose With Your Own Hands" (ကိုယ့်လက်နှင့်ရွေးချယ်) (2020)
  • "Stay Strong" (2020)

See also

References
  1. "Local boy band's moves draw protests". The Myanmar Times. 2020-10-15. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  2. "Myanmar boy band ALPHA sends youths' hearts aflutter". The Myanmar Times. 2019-12-30. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  3. "Dance group makes a splash in Seoul". The Myanmar Times. 2016-11-01. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  4. Park, Se-yeon (2020-10-07). "미얀마 아이돌 '프로젝트 케이', 4년 만에 방한 K-POP 전수 받았네". ASEAN Express (in Korean). Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  5. "Project K 1st Anniversary Fan Meeting". Yangon Life. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  6. "တစ်ဖွဲ့လုံးဘုန်းကြီးဝတ်ခဲ့ကြတဲ့ နိုင်ငံဂုဏ်ဆောင် Project K အကအဖွဲ့". Myanmarload (in Burmese). Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  7. ""Last year was a truly remarkable one with the visit of President Moon to Myanmar, State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi to Korea"". The Korea Post (in Korean). 2020-01-13. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  8. "အဖွဲ့သက်တမ်း ၃ နှစ်ပြည့်ပွဲကို ခမ်းခမ်းနားနား လုပ်မယ့် Project K အဖွဲ့". ဧရာဝတီ (in Burmese). 2019-05-03. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  9. "အတိုင်ပင်ခံရဲ့ ချီးကျူးစကားကြောင့် အားအင်တွေရသွားတယ်ဆိုတဲ့ Project-K". 7Day News - ၇ ရက်နေ့စဉ် သတင်း (in Burmese). Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  10. "Aung San Suu Kyi asks for Myanmar boy band Project K to train in S. Korea". Arirang News. 2019-11-27. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  11. "သင်ဇာဝင့်ကျော်၊ Project K နှင့် ဝါရွှေနွယ်သွေးဝင်းတို့ ပါဝင်သည့် ရုပ်သံဇာတ်လမ်းတွဲ ရိုက်မည်". DVB (in Burmese). 2019-12-18. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  12. ""ရန်ကုန်သားလေး ကျွန်တော်" သီချင်းကို ပြန်လည်သီဆိုတဲ့ အကြောင်းပြောပြတဲ့ Project K". ဧရာဝတီ (in Burmese). 2020-03-09. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  13. "မိုးရာသီသဘင်ပွဲ ဟန်ဇာမိုးဝင်း၊ တင်မောင်ဆန်းမင်းဝင်းတို့နှင့်အတူ Project K ဖျော်ဖြေမည်". DVB (in Burmese). 2020-08-04. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  14. "Project K သီဆိုသည့် "ကိုယ့်လက်နှင့်ရွေးချယ်"ရွေးကောက်ပွဲသီချင်းကို အန်အယ်လ်ဒီပါတီသို့ လှူဒါန်း". DVB (in Burmese). 2020-09-26. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  15. "Project K, a Myanmar boy band, starting K-Pop training from Sep 15, 2020, in Korea". The Myanmar Times. 2020-09-24. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  16. "Asia Song Festival 2020 တွင် သွားရောက်ဖျော်ဖြေခဲ့သည့် Project K အတွေ့အကြုံ မျှဝေမည်". The Myanmar Times (in Burmese). 2020-12-07. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  17. "Project K's performance draws widespread condemnation for stepping on images of Shwe Dagon Pagoda". Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd. 2020-10-12. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  18. "Myanmar's angriest force apology from K-pop act for featuring Shwedagon at festival debut". Coconuts Yangon. 2020-10-12. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  19. "Project K met with Protests at the Airport After Stepping on Images of the Shwedagon Pagoda". Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd. 2020-10-14. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  20. Song, Seung-hyun (2020-12-03). "W400m budget created for project to support Asian artists' K-pop training". Korea Herald. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
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