S Korea To Send 160-member Art Troupe To N Korea For Concerts

South Korea agreed Tuesday to send a 160-member art troupe to Pyongyang for rare concerts in early April ahead of South and North Korea's planned summit late next month

SEOUL, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Mar, 2018 ) ::South Korea agreed Tuesday to send a 160-member art troupe to Pyongyang for rare concerts in early April ahead of South and North Korea's planned summit late next month.

The South's art group will visit the North's capital from March 31 to April 3 for two performances, according to a joint statement adopted after inter-Korean talks at the border truce village of Panmunjom, Yonhap reported.

The art troupe will include South Korean pop singers, including contemporary Korean pop legend Cho Yong-pil, the five-member girl group Red Velvet and Seohyun, a former member of South Korean pop group Girls' Generation.

South Korea agreed to send an art troupe and a taekwondo demonstration team to Pyongyang when South Korean special envoys met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in early March.

The concert comes ahead of an inter-Korean summit slated for late April at the border village.

The move reciprocates North Korea's dispatch of musicians and traditional Korean martial art demonstrators to South Korea on the occasion of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics last month. "Our goal is to impress North Koreans in the same way as South Koreans are moved by their musicians," Yoon Sang, South Korea's chief delegate to the talks, told a press briefing in Seoul.

He is a popular singer and composer named as the music director for Seoul's art troupe. The South will send an advance team to check venues from Thursday to Saturday, according to the ministry. The concerts will be the 1,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theater and the Ryugyong Jong Ju Yong Gymnasium, which can accommodate some 12,000 spectators, it said.