The North Korean leader attended a concert by South Korean musicians in Pyongyang on Sunday. After watching one group perform, he called the event a “gift for Pyongyang citizens.”
SEOUL, South Korea — He clapped and he smiled, even posing for a group photo with a K-pop band.
The appearance by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, on Sunday at a concert by South Korean musicians in Pyongyang was all the more unusual because his authoritarian government has been struggling to stave off what it sees as an infiltration of the South’s pop culture among his isolated people.
But Mr. Kim shook the hands of members of South Korea’s most popular girl band, Red Velvet, which he and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, watched from a balcony.
After watching Red Velvet perform, Mr. Kim reportedly pronounced the event a “gift for Pyongyang citizens.”
The two-hour show at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater was part of a political détente between the neighboring countries as relations have thawed.
It was the first time a North Korean leader watched a South Korean musical performance in the North’s capital.
The performances by the South Korean troupe that flew in on Saturday with great fanfare to Pyongyang were done in the name of international diplomacy.
The show occurred just weeks before Mr. Kim is scheduled to meet with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, at a border village on April 27, and ahead of a planned summit meeting with President Trump in May.
They were the first South Korean singers to perform in North Korea in more than a decade. Their visit reciprocated a North Korean art troupe’s performances in South Korea during its Winter Olympics in February. Mr. Moon watched one of the North Korean performances.
Mr. Kim and Ms. Ri, a former singer, were among hundreds of North Koreans who filled the 1,500-seat theater to watch the South Korean singers, including older crooners, gelled rockers and K-pop starlets.
On Sunday evening, thunderous clapping erupted when Mr. Kim and his wife entered the concert hall and seated themselves in a second-floor balcony, according to pool reports from South Korean journalists and officials.
Attention was focused on how Mr.
