Seoul demands North Korea explain cancelled arts delegation visit
>> SEOUL: South Korea has urged North Korea to explain why it abruptly suspended plans to send a delegation to prepare cultural performances during the Winter Olympics, its unification minister said yesterday.
The North had planned to send a seven-member advance team headed by the leader of an all-female Western-style band to the South this weekend to inspect venues for proposed performances in Seoul and the eastern city of Gangneung.
Hyon Song-wol, reportedly an ex-girlfriend of leader Kim Jong-un, would have been the first North Korean official to visit the South in four years.
But Pyongyang said it had suspended the plan, giving no reason. It was unclear whether the visit was permanently cancelled or postponed.
“We sent a message by fax to the North ... at around 11.20am [local time], demanding an explanation,” Seoul’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told reporters.
“We’ve conveyed our position to the North that all preparations have been made for the visit and that the South and the North would be able to reset the schedule,” he added.
Ms Hyon was the subject of lurid 2013 reports in the South that she and around a dozen other state musicians had been executed for appearing in porn movies.
Pyongyang angrily denied the claims and Ms Hyon later appeared on state television.
With Ms Hyon back in spotlight ahead of the Games, South Korean media mentioned her alleged past affairs with the North’s leader Kim Jong-un, which analysts said must have annoyed Mr Kim.
“Pyongyang is apparently angry as unconfirmed rumours about Hyon’s alleged ties with Kim are being spread again,” Professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies said.
The two Koreas have agreed to march together under a unification flag — a pale blue silhouette of the Korean peninsula — at the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics scheduled for Feb 9, and to form a unified women’s ice hockey team.
But critics in the South have said a unified team would disrupt the side and deprive some Southern squad members of the chance to play on the Olympic stage.
The conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party has strongly objected to the agreement, arguing the North is seeking to exploit the South’s Olympics for its own propaganda.
“The Pyeongchang Olympics is becoming like a Pyongyang Olympics”, its leader Hong Jun-pyo said on Friday.