Band boss takes N Korea team south
SOUTH KOREA: The head of a hugely popular North Korean girl band crossed the heavily fortified border into South Korea yesterday to check preparations for rare performances by an art troupe she also leads during next month’s Winter Olympics.
Appearing live on South Korean television, Hyon Song Wol did not speak when she walked past a crowd of reporters, onlookers and a barrage of camera flashes before boarding an express train at Seoul’s railway station for the eastern city of Gangneung, where her art troupe is to perform during the Pyeongchang Olympics.
She is the leader of Pyongyang’s all-female Moranbong Band, which was hand-picked by leader Kim Jong Un. She’s been the subject of intense South Korean media attention since she attended last week’s talks at the border that struck an agreement on the 140-member Samjiyon art troupe’s two performances - one in Seoul and the other in Gangneung, where some of the games will take place. After the talks, North Korea said Hyon would also lead the Samjiyon art troupe, whose performances would be the first by a North Korean group in South Korea since 2002.
With no official media access given to Hyon, TV stations broadcast live footage of her bus moving on Seoul’s roads before arriving at the railway station, where hundreds of police officers were mobilised to maintain order. Photographs showed a smiling Hyon shaking heads with a South Korean official upon arrival at the border.
Hyon’s arrival came hours after the International Olympic Committee allowed 22 North Korean athletes to take part in the Olympics in exceptional entries given to the North. Among the 22 are 12 women who will join South Korea’s female hockey team in the Koreas’ first-ever unified Olympic team. The other sports events the North Koreans will compete in are figure skating, short track speed skating, Alpine skiing and crosscountry skiing.
The 22 North Korean athletes will march together with South Korean players under a single ‘‘unification flag’' depicting their peninsula during the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang. ‘‘Such an agreement would have seemed impossible only a few weeks ago,’' IOC chief Thomas Bach said in Lausanne, Switzerland. The current mood of reconciliation between the Koreas flared after Kim abruptly expressed his willingness to improve ties and send a delegation to the Olympics during his annual New Year’s address. Outside critics dismissed Kim’s overture as a tactic to use improved ties with Seoul to weaken US-led international sanctions over North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile programmes.
Hyon, who is also an alternate member of the ruling party’s Central Committee, is travelling with six other North Koreans. Her delegation had been expected in South Korea on Saturday, but North Korea cancelled that plan on Friday before it proposed a twoday trip starting yesterday. It wasn’t clear why the visit was rescheduled.