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NKOREA-SKOREA-OLY-2018-KOR-PRK-DIPLOMACY
Two Koreas in fresh talks on Winter Olympics
SEOUL, Jan 15, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – North and South Korea began talks Monday
on appearances by Pyongyang’s state-run artistic performers at next month’s
Winter Olympics in the South, after the North agreed to attend the Games.
Pyongyang agreed last week to send athletes, high-level officials, and
others to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, easing months of high tensions
over its weapons programmes.
The two sides agreed an art troupe would be part of the delegation, and
eight officials — four from each — started a working-level meeting to
thrash out the details on the northern side of the Military Demarcation Line
at the border truce village of Panmunjom soon after 10 am (0100 GMT), Seoul’s
unification ministry said.
The North’s delegates include Kwon Hyok-Bong, a senior culture ministry
official, as well as Hyon Song-Wol, the leader of the North’s famed all-
female Moranbong music band.
The 10-member band, established in 2012 with members supposedly chosen by
leader Kim Jong-Un, is known for its Western-style, synthesiser-driven music
and sophisticated fashion style rare in the isolated nation, although most of
their songs laud the regime.
Their numbers include the jaunty “Mother’s Birthday”, about the ruling
Workers’ Party of Korea, and the more soulful “We Call Him Father”, an ode to
leader Kim Jong-Un.
Such lyrics could fall foul of the South’s National Security Act, which
bans praise for the North.
The band once cancelled a planned performance in Beijing in 2015 and
returned home after Chinese officials took issue with propaganda images on
the stage featuring Pyongyang’s long-range missiles.
The South’s delegates include senior officials from the state-run Korean
Symphony Orchestra, raising the prospect of groups from both sides of the DMZ
performing together — another top North Korean act is the State Merited
Chorus, a military choir.
The two Koreas are also set to hold talks with the International Olympics
Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Saturday over participation of
the North’s athletes at the Games.
Seoul and Olympic organisers have been keen for Pyongyang — which
boycotted the 1988 Summer Games in the South’s capital Seoul — to take part
in what they have been promoting as a “peace Olympics.”
The North had remained silent to the offer until the Kim abruptly
announced an intention to take part in his New Year Speech, in a move seen as
aimed at easing military tension with the US.
Tension has been high on the flashpoint peninsula as the North staged a
flurry of nuclear and missile tests since last year and Kim traded threats of
war and personal attacks with US President Donald Trump.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0902 hrs