North Korean Orchestra Plans to Perform in South Korea During Winter Olympics

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HONG KONG — A 140-member North Korean pop orchestra will stage rare performances in South Korea during the Winter Olympics next month, the two Koreas agreed on Monday. The two sides discussed details of the North’s participation in the Games as part of their efforts to improve ties.

The orchestra, known as the Samjiyon Band, one of the North’s top arts troupes, will enter South Korea by crossing over at Panmunjom, a border village, and will perform twice in the South: once in Seoul, the South Korean capital, and once in Gangneung, a city on the east coast where some of the Olympic competitions will be held.

The troupe’s performances will feature 80 orchestra musicians and 60 members who sing and dance. Many of them are young women who have been allowed to adopt a more lively style and modern costumes, like short skirts, under the North’s young leader, Kim Jong-un.

But like all art troupes in the North, Samjiyon remains a tool of propaganda for Mr. Kim’s government, which uses music, movies, paintings and novels to disseminate the state’s ideology and inspire loyalty to its leadership. It and the better-known Moranbong Band have performed in numerous state art performances where Mr. Kim’s policies, as well as his missile and nuclear tests, have been celebrated.

Hyon Song-wol, a top singer with Moranbong, often considered Mr. Kim’s favorite band, participated in border talks on Monday.

The art troupe would be larger than the previous six that North Korea has sent to South Korea since 1985. The North last sent such a group in 2002, when 30 North Korean singers and dancers performed in Seoul to celebrate Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945.

Scenes of young North Korean artists performing for South Korean audiences could have huge implications. They could be moments of rare inter-Korean reconciliation after a year of high tensions over the North’s nuclear and long-range missile tests.

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Or the event could be a source of bitter controversy in the South, depending on what songs the North Korean artists perform.

To avoid having the orchestra performances become a political controversy, South Korean negotiators are expected to insist that the North Korean artists not sing songs or use stage props that would surely cause ire among South Koreans, including any references to, or images of, North Korean missiles.

During the talks on Monday, the North promised to play traditional Korean folk songs that “fit the mood for unification and are well known on both sides,” as well as classical music, said the chief South Korean delegate, Lee Woo-sung. Mr. Lee said more discussions were expected to work out other details of North Korean performances.

The South Korean government said it hoped that the North Korean orchestra would “contribute to improving relations and recovering the cultural homogeneity.” Both sides have not decided whether the North Koreans will hold any joint concerts with a South Korean orchestra.

After years of denouncing the South as an American stooge, Mr. Kim, the North Korean leader, used his New Year’s Day speech to propose a dialogue to discuss his country’s participation in the Winter Olympics being held in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang beginning Feb. 7.

South Korea quickly embraced the idea as a way to calm tensions and dispel fears of a possible war on the divided peninsula spurred by the North’s nuclear and missile tests and President Trump’s frequent threats to destroy the North should it pose harm to the Americans and their allies.

In border talks held at Panmunjom last week, the two sides agreed that North Korea would send athletes and cheerleaders, as well as an art troupe, journalists and a taekwondo demonstration team. Working-level negotiators met at Panmunjom on Monday to sort out the details.

The South Korean government also said that the two Koreas had agreed in principle to field a joint women’s ice hockey team. The International Olympic Committee is scheduled to discuss the proposal when it brings together Olympic officials from both Koreas in Switzerland on Saturday to discuss the North’s last-minute decision to join the Olympics.

If approved, it would be the Koreas’ first unified Olympic team ever and the first joint Korean team in an international sporting event since the two Koreas competed together in an international table tennis championship and a youth soccer tournament in 1991.