NORTH KOREAN ATHLETES WILL GO SOUTH FOR ASIAN GAMES

Seoul, Sept. 2: A plane carrying the first batch of North Korean athletes will land in South Korea next week for this month’s Asian Games despite tensions between the two nations, sports officials said on Tuesday.

A total of 273 athletes and officials will cross the sensitive Yellow Sea border in six flights from September 11, said Son Kwang- Ho, vice head of the North’s Olympic Committee, in a letter passed through the truce village of Panmunjom.

Organisers of Asia’s biggest sporting event, to be held in the South’s western port of Incheon, said they would quickly wrap up written contacts with North Korea on the dispatch of its athletes.

The South has already approved a rare flight across the Yellow Sea, a flashpoint area and scene of bloody clashes in the past. But preparations for the North’s participation in the quadrennial Games have been fraught with disagreements.