Koreas discuss North’s plans for Olympics

SEOUL, South Korea — Officials from the Koreas met Monday to work out details about North Korea’s plan to send an art troupe to the South during next month’s Winter Olympics, as the rivals tried to follow up on the North’s recent agreement to cooperate in the Games in a conciliatory gesture following months of nuclear tensions.

In a development that still shows their animosities, 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. The threat is relatively milder than the North’s typical fiery rhetoric, and it didn’t appear to put the recent reconciliatory mood in imminent danger.

“They should know that train and bus carrying our delegation to the Olympics are still in Pyongyang,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said. “The South Korean authorities had better ponder over what unfavorable results may be entailed by their impolite behavior.”

The KCNA criticized South Korean President Moon Jae-in for crediting President Donald Trump for getting the North to sit down with the South. Trump has contended his tough stance helped persuade the North to hold talks. KCNA also accused South Korea of letting the United States deploy aircraft carriers and other strategic assets near the Korean Peninsula on the occasion of the Olympics.

Monday’s talks at the border village of Panmunjom will probably focus on the makeup of an art troupe and when and where in South Korea they would perform, according to South Korean officials.

North Korea last week agreed to send an Olympic delegation and hold military talks aimed at reducing animosities in its first formal talks with South Korea in about two years.