North Korea has agreed to send an orchestra of 140 members to perform during the Winter Olympics in South Korea next month, the South Korean government said yesterday.
An agreement on the orchestra was reached during talks at the border truce village of Panmunjom, with the orchestra to stage performances in Seoul and at Gangneung, near Pyeongchang, where the Games will take place, the South Korean Unification Ministry said in a statement.
Seoul also said the North Korean arts troupe headed for the Games would cross the border on foot.
Photo: Bloomberg / South Korean Unification Ministry
Gangwon ProvinceGovernor Choi Moon-soon said earlier in the day that the orchestra might hold a joint concert with South Korean musicians during the Games, which open in Pyeongchang on Feb. 9.
Delegations from the two Koreas yesterday met to discuss the North sending artists to the Olympics after Pyongyang said it would send athletes, cheerleaders, performers and others to the Games during its first formal dialogue with the South in more than two years.
Drawing keen attention is whether the North would send its famous “Moranbong Band,” an all-female ensemble hand-picked by the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
One of the North Korean delegates to the talks is Hyon Song-wol, the head of the Moranbong Band, the Unification Ministry said.
Since its first stage debut in 2012, the band is hugely popular at home and has been dubbed by outsiders as “North Korea’s only girl group” for its Western-style performances featuring women in mini-skirts and high heels dancing and singing odes to Kim.
However, the North issued a veiled threat on Sunday indicating it could cancel its plans to send an Olympic delegation to protest what it called South Korea’s “sordid acts of chilling” the prospect for inter-Korean reconciliation.
“They should know that train and bus carrying our delegation to the Olympics are still in Pyongyang,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KNCA) said. “`The South Korean authorities had better ponder over what unfavorable results may be entailed by their impolite behavior.”
KCNA criticized the remarks by South Korean President Moon Jae-in last week that credited US President Donald Trump for getting the North to sit down with the South. It also accused Seoul of letting Washington deploy strategic assets like an aircraft carrier near the Korean Peninsula on the occasion of the Olympics.
The Unification Ministry said the North proposed another working-level meeting tomorrow to have broader talks on its Olympic participation. South Korea earlier proposed that meeting be held yesterday, but the North wanted to discuss the art troupe first.
The International Olympic Committee plans to separately meet North and South Korean officials this weekend to discuss the North’s Olympic cooperation.
Additional reporting by AP
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