SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un clapped his hands as he, along with his wife and hundreds of other citizens, watched a rare performance Sunday by South Korean pop stars visiting Pyongyang, highlighting the thawing ties between the rivals after years of heightened tensions over the North's nuclear program.
A South Korean artistic group, including some of the South's pop legends and popular girl band Red Velvet, flew to Pyongyang over the weekend for two performances in the North Korean capital, one on Sunday and the other on Tuesday. How North Koreans would react to Red Velvet was particularly the focus of keen media attention in South Korea.
During Sunday's performance at the packed East Pyongyang Grand Theater, Kim made a surprise visit with his wife, Ri Sol Ju; sister Kim Yo Jong; and other senior North Korean officials, including nominal head of state Kim Yong Nam. Kim applauded during the event and shook hands with South Korean performers, even taking a group photo with them after their performance, according to South Korean media pool reports from Pyongyang.
Pool TV footage also showed Kim, clad in a dark Mao-style suit, clapping from the second-floor VIP stand as South Korean Culture Minister Do Jong-hwan bowed and greeted North Korean spectators looking on from the first floor.
[NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA: Maps, data on country’s nuclear program]
"We should hold culture and art performances frequently," Kim told South Korean performers. Mentioning the performance's title "Spring Comes," Kim also asked the performers to tell South Korean President Moon Jae-in that the two Koreas should hold a similar event in Seoul in the autumn, the pool reports said, citing an unidentified South Korean performer.
"The whole purpose of cultural exchange is to open the gates for better relations between the North and the South, which have been strained for a decade," said Kang Dong-wan, a professor at Dong-a University and a leader of the Busan Hana Center, an institute that helps North Korean defectors in the South Korean port city of Busan. "There is a strong political motive to boost the mood ahead of the summit."
In 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and threatened to test atomic weapons. President George W. Bush had labeled it a member of the "axis of evil" in 2002.
Fifteen years later, Kim is seeking to engage the region's major powers after advances in his nuclear program prompted the United Nations to tighten sanctions and President Donald Trump to threaten war.
During a surprise visit to Beijing last week, China said Kim indicated he was willing to talk with Trump about giving up nuclear weapons. The trip to China was Kim's first known trip outside of North Korea since his father Kim Jong Il died in 2011.
Meanwhile, the summit planned for April 27 with Moon on the southern side of the border's demilitarized zone would make Kim the first North Korean leader to set foot in South Korea.
But it's the shifts in technology since the early 2000s that could make this musical extravaganza different, Kang said. K-Pop -- characterized by its manufactured melodies and slick approach to marketing -- has penetrated into North Korea over the past 10 years. Smuggled across the border on USB sticks and bootleg DVDs, K-pop has spread widely among the families of North Korea's political elite, Kang said.
Kim also talked about Red Velvet.
"There had been interests in whether I would come and see Red Velvet. I had initially planned to attend a performance the day after tomorrow but I came here today after adjusting my schedule," Kim was quoted as saying. "I thank you for this kind of gift to Pyongyang citizens."
Red Velvet is being joined in Pyongyang by South Korean singer Baek Ji Young and rock band YB, according to the Unification Ministry.
It was the first time for a North Korean leader to attend such a South Korean performance. Before Sunday's performance, South Korea last sent a pop singer to North Korea in 2005.
When K-Pop boy band Shinhwa performed in North Korea in 2003 as part of a similar cultural diplomacy venture, the audience -- dressed in suits and traditional dresses -- greeted them with silence and stony stares. One of the band members, Eric Mun, told reporters that they looked at the singers "with eyes like shooting lasers," according to Yonhap.
North Korean concertgoers on Sunday waved their hands from their seats when South Korean stars joined together to sing a popular Korean song, "Our wish is unification," the TV footage showed.
Full video of the performance wasn't immediately available. The South Korean group includes prominent singers such as Cho Yong-pil, Lee Sunhee and Cho Jin Hee, who all previously performed in Pyongyang during a past era of detente.
The ongoing cooperation steps between the rivals began after North Korea took part in February's Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. During the games, a North Korean art troupe performed in South Korea, and Moon and his wife watched it with visiting senior North Korean officials including Kim Yo Jong, who became the first member of the North's ruling Kim family to visit the South since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
Kim is to meet Moon at a border village on April 27 and Trump in May in separate summit talks.
The show on Tuesday will be a joint performance featuring acts from both Koreas and will take place at a stadium in Pyongyang that can hold 12,000 people.
A South Korean tae kwon do demonstration team also held a performance in Pyongyang on Sunday.
Elsewhere, a joint military exercise involving U.S. and South Korean troops got underway in South Korea on Sunday, local media reported.
Roughly 300,000 South Korean soldiers were participating in the four-week Foal Eagle training alongside more than 11,500 U.S. troops, according to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency.
The annual drills normally begin in late February or early March but were delayed this year because of the Winter Olympics, which were held in in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February, Yonhap said.
The exercise has also been shortened from two months to one, it said.
No U.S. aircraft carriers or nuclear submarines were expected to join the drills, Yonhap said.
GRAHAM BACKS BOLTON
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he's glad John Bolton will serve as Trump's national security adviser going into talks with North Korea because of his "very healthy skepticism."
Graham said he had dinner with Bolton a couple of nights ago and the hawkish former ambassador to the U.N. expressed fears that North Korea is "just buying time" as it seeks to develop a nuclear-armed missile.
"He sees these negotiations as a way of buying time. That's what they've done in the past," said Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Bolton replaces Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster on April 9.
Graham said he would be skeptical about the terms and conditions of the summit, but he does hope the president will meet with the North Korean leader. He called for negotiations that are "very focused and get quick action."
"We don't want to give him nine months or a year to talk and build a missile at the same time," Graham said on Fox News Sunday.
WARREN IN CHINA
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren says chaos in the Trump administration is harming its ability to formulate coherent policy toward North Korea's nuclear program and other important issues in Asia.
Vacancies in the foreign service are undermining Washington's ability to advance U.S interests, Warren told reporters in Beijing on Saturday.
U.S. allies, while still supportive, are "searching for information" about U.S. intentions in Asia, the Massachusetts Democrat said.
"This has been a chaotic foreign policy in the region, and that makes it hard to keep the allies that we need to accomplish our objectives closely stitched-in," Warren said.
Warren also visited South Korea and Japan during her trip to Asia.
She said Trump's agreement to meet with North Korea's leader was "rash," in the absence of Pyongyang's commitment to take "any steps at all to indicate that they were serious about denuclearization."
On China, Warren said the U.S. needs to acknowledge Beijing's growing power and influence and continue to emphasize the importance of human rights within the relationship.
"I understand that our relationship with China is complex," Warren said. "There are areas where we have mutual interests and where we will work together to try to accomplish our shared goals. But there are also areas where we are vigorous competitors and do not have shared interests."
Warren's visit to Northeast Asia follows the abrupt firing of Rex Tillerson as U.S. secretary of state and the Trump administration's continued failure to fill many crucial positions.
Tillerson lost the support of many of the State Department's 75,000 workers over his moves to cut the budget, leave key leadership positions vacant and downplay human rights and democracy promotion as diplomatic priorities.
Warren said "consistent efforts to take the legs out of our diplomatic corps" by understaffing the service stands to undermine America's foreign policy efforts.
"That's someone whose information, whose thoughts, whose analysis doesn't get put into the mix," she said.
Warren said that there could be no military solution to the dispute with North Korea and that she has been told that "it will take strong economic and diplomatic efforts" to reduce the threat posed by Pyongyang.
Information for this article was contributed by Hyung-Jin Kim, Kevin Freking and Christopher Bodeen of The Associated Press; Sohee Kim and Kanga Kong of Bloomberg News; and staff members of Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
A Section on 04/02/2018