Kim watches K-pop concert

Pyongyang : North Korean leader Kim Jong Un yesterday attended the first concert in Pyongyang for over a decade by South Korean entertainers, including a K-pop girlband, the latest gesture of reconciliation before a rare inter-Korean summit.

The visit came as a diplomatic thaw quickens on the peninsula after months of military tensions.

The 120-member group -- 11 musical acts as well as dancers, technicians and martial artists -- are giving a concert on Sunday and another on Tuesday.

Kim and his wife came to watch yesterday’s show, a Seoul culture ministry official said, making him the first leader of the North to attend a concert by South Korean performers.

Kim said inter-Korean cultural events should be held more often and suggested another event in Seoul this autumn, the South’s Yonhap News Agency said, citing a pool report.

Two other high-level North Korean officials, Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong and nominal head of state Kim Yong Nam, also attended, the report said.

Taekwondo athletes also staged a performance before an audience of 2,300 in Pyongyang yesterday ahead of a joint display of the Korean martial art with the North’s practitioners on Monday.

The concert went ahead at the elaborately decorated 1,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theatre.

The rapprochement was triggered by the South’s Winter Olympics, to which the North’s leader Kim Jong Un sent athletes, cheerleaders and his powerful sister as an envoy.

A North Korean art troupe, the 140-member Samjiyon Orchestra, staged two performances in South Korea last month to celebrate the Olympics.

Kim followed up by agreeing to a summit with the South’s President Moon Jae-in, and reportedly to another with US President Donald Trump. The young leader also met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week during his first overseas trip.

The inter-Korean summit, the third after meetings in 2000 and 2007, will be held on April 27. No date has been set for the US-North Korean summit although it is expected before the end of May.

In another sign of eased tensions, annual US-South Korean military exercises which got under way in the South yesterday will last for just one month compared to some two months normally.

This year’s drills feature fewer strategic weapons such as a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, Seoul’s military has said. The deployment of such powerful weaponry during past drills has frequently drawn an angry response from the North.