A ferry will transport a 140-member arts delegation from North to South for the Olympics, after Seoul agreed to suspend a ban on North Korean ships.
SEOUL, South Korea — A 140-member arts troupe from North Korea plans to travel to South Korea this week by ferry, forcing the South to temporarily lift its ban on all North Korean ships entering its waters, officials said on Monday.
The arts troupe, comprising orchestra musicians, dancers and singers, will arrive in South Korea on Tuesday on board the ferry Mangyongbong-92, said Baik Tae-hyun, a spokesman at the Unification Ministry, a South Korean government agency in charge of relations with North Korea.
North Korea also notified the South that the ship would serve as lodging for the artists, a move apparently designed to keep them from having contact with South Koreans. When North Korea agreed last month to participate in the Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang, it also agreed to send the troupe as part of Olympic-related cultural events.
The ferry is expected to dock near Gangneung, on the east coast of South Korea, where the North Korean artists are to perform on Thursday, the eve of the Winter Olympics. Gangneung is hosting Olympic events including women’s ice hockey, in which the two Koreas will compete as a joint team, a first in Olympic history.
The troupe will perform again in a national theater in Seoul on Sunday.
When North Korea sent 288 cheerleaders to the 2002 Asian Games in the South Korean port city of Busan, where its athletes competed, they arrived in Busan on the same ferry and similarly used it as lodging.
The Mangyongbong-92 itself is not one of the North Korean ships blacklisted by the United Nations or Washington on suspicion of involvement in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
But South Korea has cut off all trade with North Korea and barred its ships from entering South Korean waters under sanctions it imposed following the sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010. It blamed a North Korean torpedo attack for the sinking, which killed 46 sailors in one of the country’s worst military disasters since the 1950-53 Korean War.
“We are considering making the ferry an exception, given our efforts to make Pyeongchang a success,” Mr. Baik said in reference to the Olympic Games and their main host city.
United Nations sanctions also require countries to inspect ships that have recently visited North Korea. South Korea’s own sanctions, imposed as punishment against North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, ban ships from docking in South Korean ports for one year after visiting North Korea.
Mr. Baik said South Korea was talking with the United States and the United Nations to ensure that the Mangyongbong-92’s visit to South Korea would not violate international sanctions.
South Korea won an exception from Washington when its Asiana Air charter plane took South Korean players to a North Korean ski resort last week for joint training with the North Koreans. The passenger jet later returned home with North Korean athletes who are competing in the Olympics. Washington normally bans planes from landing in the United States for six months after visiting North Korea.
In North Korea, musicians and singers serve as a key vehicle for state propaganda. South Korean officials said they were talking with their North Korean counterparts to ensure that the North Korean troupe steers away from political messages during performances.
More than 150,000 South Koreans have applied for 1,060 free tickets to the performances, which the government is distributing by an online lottery.
When Hyon Song-wol, a well-known North Korean singer who leads the troupe, visited Gangneung and Seoul last month to inspect concert halls, her trip triggered a frenzy in the South Korean media, which focused intensely on what she wore and what she ate during her visit.
South Korea is eager to use the North’s Olympic participation as an opportunity to expand inter-Korean dialogue and to ease tensions with Pyongyang. Both Washington and Tokyo have warned that such efforts should not weaken the enforcement of sanctions that the United Nations has imposed on the North.
