North Korea agrees, again, to pre-olympic visit to South Korea

The efforts to ensure that North Korea takes part in the games are part of moves to lessen tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The past year has been marked by aggressive rhetoric not just from Pyongyang, which has drawn criticism for its nuclear and missile tests, but also from Washington, where President Donald Trump has threatened military action to pressure the North.

Pyongyang had initially said it would follow up on its agreement to participate in the Olympics by sending a seven-member team to inspect concert halls where a North Korean arts troupe is scheduled to perform. Seoul agreed to the visit, which was to take place on Saturday, but the North abruptly canceled it without saying why.

Given the lack of an explanation, and the North Korean government’s general opaqueness and unpredictability, there was much speculation in South Korea about what the cancellation meant. Some suggested that the move might even cast doubt on the North’s participation in the Olympics, which will be held in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang.

Anxious officials pressed North Korea on Saturday to explain why it had canceled the visit. Hours later, they said that the North had agreed to send the team, but that the visit would instead happen on Sunday. South Korea did not say whether Pyongyang had offered an explanation. But the North’s official Korean Central News Agency hinted at the source of its anger by lashing out at conservatives in South Korea who have argued that the North’s Olympic participation could violate United Nations sanctions.

There “are dishonest things seriously chilling the dramatic atmosphere for the north-south reconciliation created by the great magnanimity and the initiative steps taken” by the North, the news agency said, urging South Korean authorities to address the problem.

In an apparent move to soothe Pyongyang, South Korean officials appealed on Saturday to local news outlets, asking them not to carry speculative articles or dwell too much on controversial aspects of the North’s participation in the games.

Also on Saturday, the International Olympic Committee announced that 22 North Korean athletes, as well as 24 coaches and 21 media representatives, would be allowed to take part in the games. The athletes will compete in women’s ice hockey, figure skating, short-track speedskating, cross-country skiing and Alpine skiing. The two countries had already agreed on Wednesday to form the unified hockey team, the first inter-Korean team ever fielded at the Olympics.

The Koreas have also agreed that their delegations will march together during the opening ceremony. The International Olympic Committee said on Saturday that the countries would be led into the main stadium by two athletes carrying a flag symbolizing a unified Korea. When the combined hockey team plays, “Arirang,” a folk song popular on both sides of the border, will play in place of either country’s national anthem.

President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, who lobbied for the North’s participation in the games well before Pyongyang agreed to it this month, has said it will help ease the tensions that have built up on the peninsula during the past year over the North’s nuclear and missile tests. But Moon’s critics, including much of South Korea’s generally conservative media, have argued that the North will use the Olympics as a propaganda opportunity, to try to weaken international resolve over enforcing sanctions against the North for its nuclear program.

South Korean officials have insisted they would ensure that the North Korean delegates kept political propaganda out of their activities in the South. But the musicians and other performers being sent by Pyongyang, like any North Korean artist allowed to appear overseas, will have been well-trained in propagandizing for the country’s authoritarian regime.

North Korea had announced that its advance team would be headed by Hyon Song-wol, a singer who leads the Moranbong Band, said to be a favorite of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. Under Kim’s rule, the band has enlivened the North’s propaganda-heavy pop music scene, sporting short skirts and performing American pop standards like “My Way” and the “Rocky” theme song.

Hyon herself has received outsize media attention in South Korea, where some news outlets have speculated — with no apparent evidence — that she was once Kim’s girlfriend, a theory dismissed by North Korea analysts in the South. Kim’s wife, Ri Sol-ju, is herself a former member of a pop band.

When reports linking Hyon to Kim first emerged years ago, North Korea called them “an unpardonable hideous provocation hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership.” Some South Korean news outlets have continued to refer to Hyon in recent days as Kim’s former girlfriend, and some analysts said on Saturday that the advance team’s visit might have been canceled in protest.

Hyon was at the border village of Panmunjom for talks on Monday, when North Korea agreed to send a 140-member arts troupe to the South for concerts in Seoul and Gangneung, an Olympic venue on the east coast, during the Winter Games. Hyon was widely expected to lead the troupe.

She first gained international attention in 2013, when news reports in South Korea and Japan claimed that she had been executed on Kim’s orders. But she later appeared in public wearing an army colonel’s insignia and thanking Kim for his “heavenly trust and warm care” of the Moranbong Band. In October, Hyon was elected to the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee as an alternate member.

In 2015, Hyon led the Moranbong Band to Beijing for a performance meant as a gesture of friendship between the two countries’ Communist governments. But just hours before the performance was to begin, the band packed up and returned home.

Neither government has explained what happened. But South Korean intelligence officials have since told lawmakers in Seoul that Hyon was enraged when Chinese authorities tried to interfere with her program, which was steeped with propaganda touting Kim and his leadership.

Relations between North Korea and China have become increasingly strained in recent years, as Kim has defied not only Washington but also Beijing by accelerating his country’s nuclear and missile tests.

The New York Times

North Korea agrees, again, to pre-olympic visit to South Korea

The confusion on Saturday surrounding the visit came as the International Olympic Committee approved 22 North Korean athletes to take part in the games and confirmed that the two countries would march together during the Feb. 9 opening ceremony.

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