They have shared kimchi and soju with Moon, sat in the same box at the Olympics opening ceremony and cheered a unified women’s ice hockey team together.
SEOUL: South Korean President Moon Jae-in sat next to the powerful sister of the North’s leader Kim Jong Un at a concert in Seoul by musicians from Pyongyang, as conservative protesters burned the North’s national flag outside on Sunday (Feb 11).
The show was the final set-piece element of the North Korean delegation’s landmark visit, the diplomatic highlight of the Olympics-driven rapprochement between the two halves of the peninsula, and they flew back home afterwards.
They have shared kimchi and soju with Moon, sat in the same box at the Olympics opening ceremony and cheered a unified women’s ice hockey team together.
Kim on Saturday invited Moon to a summit in the North, an offer extended by his sister and special envoy Kim Yo Jong, who made history as the first member of the North’s ruling dynasty to visit the South since the Korean War.
Moon did not immediately accept the invitation and has said he hopes the «right conditions» will be created so it can go ahead.
Pictures showed Yo Jong seated between Moon and the North’s ceremonial head of state Kim Yong Nam, who is officially leading the North’s delegation, and applauding at Sunday’s concert.
The show by Pyongyang’s Samjiyon Orchestra featured a surprise appearance by Seohyun, of top South Korean K-pop girlband Girls Generation.
It was part of a cross-border deal in which the isolated nuclear-armed North sent hundreds of athletes, cheerleaders and others to the Pyeongchang Winter Games in the South.
At an earlier dinner with senior Seoul officials, Yo Jong said she found the two Koreas still had much in common despite decades of separation.
Before flying south, she said, she had expected «things would be very different and unfamiliar», according to a statement from Moon’s office.
