BEIJING/SEOUL -- A six-member South Korean advance team left for North Korea on Thursday to check venues for a South Korean art troupe's performances planned in Pyongyang in early April ahead of an inter-Korean summit.
The team of government officials and experts boarded a North Korean flight in Beijing on Thursday for a three-day visit as the South's 160-member art troupe will hold two concerts in Pyongyang between March 31 and April 3, they said.
The group plans to check technical and practical matters like lights and sound at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater and the Ryugyong Jong Ju Yong Gymnasium.
"We are to visit Pyongyang to (fine-tune) details about the concerts, including the program," Tak Hyun-min, a protocol presidential aide to President Moon Jae-in, said before the departure.
Tak Hyun-min (L), a protocol presidential aide to President Moon Jae-in, walks to his gate in an airport in Beijing on March 22, to head to North Korea as a member of an advance team for a South Korean art troupe, a trip aimed at checking venues for performances in Pyongyang. (Yonhap)
Tak previously organized K-pop concerts and is currently designing major events at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae.
"We will meticulously check the venues as we are well-aware of the public's anticipation and concerns," he said. "I will make efforts for good concerts with (Yoon Sang), the musical director for Seoul's art troupe, after returning home."
South Korea's art troupe will include such pop singers as 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.
The set lists for the concerts were not decided at inter-Korean talks held Tuesday at the truce village of Panmunjom, according to Yoon Sang, a popular composer who's been named the musical director.
Seoul is seeking to get an exemption from Washington for the art troupe's trip to the North by airplane as US unilateral sanctions ban vessels and aircraft that have visited North Korea from visiting the US within 180 days.
The South has also consulted with the US over the advance team's use of a flight belonging to North Korea's Air Koryo. The US has put North Korea's sole airline on the blacklist of its sanctions.
"We've discussed Korean nationals' use of a North Korean plane with the US. We've heard that there won't be any problem," said an official at Seoul's foreign ministry.
The US sanctions bar the provision of services to North Korea's Air Koryo but fall short of banning the boarding of its flights.
Meanwhile, the government said it is in consultation with North Korea over the dispatch of a taekwondo demonstration team to North Korea along with the South's art troupe.
North Korea extended an invitation for South Korean musicians and taekwondo demonstrators to visit Pyongyang when South Korean special envoys visited the North in early March.
The move reciprocates North Korea's sending of an art troupe and Korean martial art demonstrators to the South to celebrate the PyeongChang Winter Olympics last month. (Yonhap)