North Korea — masters of grand, choreographed celebrations — will send its state-sponsored cheering squad to the Winter Olympic Games next mont PyeongChang, South Korea.
Regardless of which North Korean athletes end up competing in the Winter Olympics next month, their country is ready to bring an army of fans.
That’s because the North Korean government — master of the giant, choreographed celebration — negotiated the right to bring its state-sponsored cheering squad to the Games, set to begin Feb. 9 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The arrangement was included in a recent deal between the Koreas that secured the isolated North’s presence at the Games.
The group of 230 women, dubbed an “army of beauties” by observers, is expected to bring a unique and practiced blend of chants, dances and songs.
“They will be the cover girls of the whole delegation,” said Suk-Young Kim, a critical studies professor at UCLA who has written books about Korean culture, most recently about pop music. “They will be the centerpiece of North Korea’s propaganda efforts.”
It will be the first time in 13 years that the cheering squad — which once included North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s wife, Ri Sol Ju — will appear in South Korea.
The last time the group performed in the South, about 100 women attended the 2005 Asian Athletics Championships. They arrived at Incheon International Airport with unification flags, dressed in striking white and black choson-ot, a ceremonial flowing outfit in North Korea. (It’s known as a hanbok in South Korea.)
That squad, which included a then-single Ri, performed together dressed often in identical costumes and baseball caps — as they did during other international sporting events in the South, in 2002 and 2003.
Seeing the squad this year might generate positive feelings among South Koreans, old and young, about the possibilities of unifying the Korean peninsula — an elusive, long-term goal for both nations that was an undercurrent sparking the agreement to cooperate, analysts said.
The two nations, separated during World War II and the Korean War, which ended with an armistice in 1953, have lived divided and bracing for conflict.
