Kris Wu, an ordinary kid from Vancouver, transformed into one of China’s biggest celebrities, with chart-topping albums, movie roles and lucrative brand partnerships. Then a series of social media accusations brought him down.
the Chinese-Canadian pop star Kris Wu was at the peak of his fame: young, confident, unstoppable. That month, he released his album Antares, and the record was a phenomenon, with seven songs landing on the American iTunes top 10.
As the only child of a single mother, Wu grew up quickly. He saw himself as his mom’s protector. As soon as he turned 16, he got his licence to drive himself to school and back; he didn’t want his mom to have to take him. In high school, he held a job as a server at an Asian karaoke parlour, in part to relieve his mom’s financial pressure. “I didn’t want to always have to ask my mom for money, like when I wanted bubble tea,” he told a talk show host in 2016.
In 2008, Wu disappeared suddenly from Point Grey. His classmates didn’t know where he went or what happened to him. Most wouldn’t see him again until 2012, when he resurfaced in a music video not as Kevin Li, but as Kris Wu—a newly minted K-pop idol.or K-pop, was sweeping the globe. The worldwide export of South Korean pop culture—known as hallyu—became the backbone of the country’s soft power beginning in the 2000s. In 2004, the K-pop industry generated US$1.
In 2007, when Wu was just shy of 17, he accompanied a friend to SM’s global auditions in Vancouver. Wu passed the Vancouver tryouts, then made it through several subsequent rounds. Eventually, he was offered an idol training contract in South Korea’s capital.
K-pop companies govern how their stars look, act and dress—some even have “no dating” clauses in their contracts. SM, sometimes called “Slave Master Entertainment,” is notorious for its strict training regimes. Several former idols have launched lawsuits against SM over the years, the most recent being a joint effort from three members of the K-pop group EXO, who terminated their contracts with SM in June of this year and alleged that the company owed them payment.
The same year, Wu and Little G Na , a then-19-year-old Chinese-Canadian influencer, began a relationship; he even flew her to Toronto for a rendezvous. But, according to Kevin Shin, Wu never thought of G Na as his girlfriend. “He was chatting with multiple girls at the same time,” Shin says. His next goal was to conquer the Western music scene. Wu rapped “I’m the Yeezus of the East” in a track with YouTube-famous musicians Joji and Rich Brian. In late 2017, Wu became the first-ever Chinese-born artist to hit number one on the U.S. iTunes chart for his single “Deserve” with Travis Scott. The Western entertainment hype machine was there to build him up.
Du felt gutted and betrayed. And so, motivated by revenge or justice or both, she unleashed a torrent of accusations against Wu. In July of 2021, she publicly posted on Weibo with an account of what she says really happened the first night she met him: he had allegedly raped her after she drank too much at the party and went unconscious. “You loved a lot of girls at the same time, but I was just one of them.” She said Wu, who was 30, had a penchant for young girls.
The police accusation against Du only galvanized her supporters, generating a swift and forceful backlash. One post, which received over 100,000 likes and shares, said: “If Du is sensationalizing her story to become famous, I support it, so the whole world will know about Wu’s alleged crimes.” The hashtag #GirlsHelpGirls went viral on Chinese social media, with over 11 million mentions by mid-July.
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