N Korea orchestra to perform in South

Seoul, January 16

A 140-member North Korean orchestra will perform in South Korea during next month’s Winter Olympics, the two sides announced today, amid a tentative rapprochement after months of tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme. The North agreed last week to send athletes, high-level officials and others to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
The two sides agreed an artistic troupe would be part of the delegation, and four officials from each country met today at the border truce village of Panmunjom to thrash out details of that visit. The 140 members of the Samjiyon Orchestra will hold concerts in the capital Seoul and the eastern city of Gangneung close to Pyeongchang which is hosting the Games, said a joint statement after the talks.
“The South will ensure the safety and convenience of the North’s performing squad to the utmost extent,” it said, without elaborating on the dates for the concerts.
The concerts, if they go ahead, would mark the first time that a North Korean artistic troupe has performed in the capitalist South since 2002, during a previous rare period of rapprochement.