North Korea to Send Athletes and High-level Delegation to Winter Olympics in South Korea
North Korea will send athletes and a high-level delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea and the two countries will maintain military contacts, the delegations from Seoul and Pyongyang agreed.
North Korea will send athletes, artists, observers, a taekwondo demonstration team, and journalists.
"The North proposed to send a high-level delegation, a delegation from the National Olympic Committee, athletes, supporters, artists, observers, a taekwondo demonstration team, and journalists" to the sports event, which will be held in Pyeongchang in February, the two countries announced in a statement at the end of the first meeting in over two years.
"Olympics of Peace"
The tone was radically different from the rhetoric of the past months, with North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un, and US President, Donald Trump, exchanging personal insults and threats of war, and Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests.
For the past two years, the situation on the peninsula has deteriorated, with the North conducting three new nuclear tests and increasing missile launches.
Seoul has dubbed the competition in Pyeongchang - just 80 kilometers from the Demilitarized Zone - as the "Olympics of Peace," but for the description to make sense, Pyongyang's participation is necessary.
Kim Jong-Un proposed in his New Year's speech the possibility of sending a delegation of athletes to these Winter Olympics, to which Seoul responded with an offer of dialogue. Last week, the inter-Korean "hotline" was restored, after being suspended for almost two years.
Among the issues that still need to be defined are the joint appearance in the opening and closing ceremonies (as in Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, and Turin 2006), the composition of the North Korean delegation, and their accommodation, which is expected to be funded by Seoul.
At the moment, North Korea only has two qualified athletes for the games, but hundreds of young North Korean cheerleaders have caused a sensation at previous sporting events in the South.
Kim's younger sister, Yo-Jong, a high-ranking official in the ruling Workers' Party, could be part of the high-level North Korean delegation, according to the South Korean press.