Pyongyang wants to send music band to 2018 Winter Games

2018 Winter Olympics
2018 Winter Olympics Reuters

Pyongyang on Saturday proposed a fresh meeting with Seoul to discuss plans to send a music band to the Winter Olympics, scheduled to be held in South Korea's PyeongChang city in February.

The Kim Jong-un regime added that it would later propose the dates for the meetings over its participation in the Winter Olympics.

North Korea proposed the meeting be held on Monday in Panmungak, on the northern side of the militarized inter-Korean border, where it will send four art officials, Yonhap quoted South Korea's Unification Ministry as saying.

The Unification Ministry said it would send a response after studying the proposal from the North.

Pyongyang's proposal comes a day after Seoul offered to resume high-level talks, led by Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung on Monday to discuss the participation of North Korean athletes in the Winter Games.

During the meeting between the two Koreas on January 9, which was the first in more than two years, Pyongyang said it would send an official delegation, athletes, cheerleaders, an art troupe and taekwondo demonstration teams to PyeongChang.

However, both countries still need to work out the details, including how the North Korean group would travel to South, and its cost and expenditure, given the UN sanctions on Pyongyang.

Besides its commitment towards facilitating North Korea's participation at the winter event, the two countries also agreed during their last meeting to hold military-level talks but had not decided on a date.

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