The leader in the North blasted the South for praising Donald Trump, this weekend, leaving a back cloud lingering over talks.
South Korea will demand answers from the North which has avoided concrete answers to direct requests, just weeks ahead of the world’s best winter sport athletes descending on the region.
South Korea will discuss the North’s bizarre plan to send a dance troupe south of the border during the upcoming Olympics, being held between February 9 and 15.
Heavily guarded talks will be held at Tongilgak, a North Korean building in the truce village of Panmunjom.
Four arts officials will attend from the North led by Kwon Hyok-bong, former head of the North’s Unhasu Orchestra, who is now director of the performing arts bureau at the culture ministry.
An ex girlfriend of Kim’s will also be in attendance, as the leader of the all-female Moranbong Bandset up by Kim.
Hyon Song-wol believed to be in her late 30s is famous for performing North Korean propaganda songs and some Western pop music.
Hyon, put on the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea’s Central Committee last year, was once rumoured to have been executed.
From the South, Lee Woo-sung, head of the culture and arts policy office at the culture ministry will lead talks, with Korean Symphony Orchestra’s CEO Lee Won-choul, its artistic director, Chong Chi-yong, and Han Jong-wook, head of an inter-Korean dialogue division under the unification ministry’s Office of Inter-Korean Dialogue.
Bizarrely, it is now being suggested the North and the South may conduct a joint performance, despite the frosty relations.
The Koreas held their first talks for two years this week in which it was suggested the teams for each would walk together at the sporting championships.
Pyongyang, capital of the north and Seoul in the South could not form an arrangement since Kim’s regime refused to give an immediate answer.
The North did agree to send a delegation of athletes, cheerleaders, an art troupe and taekwondo demonstration teams.
In fresh talks beginning Monday Seoul will ask for a joint women’s hockey team despite the growing tensions between the two.
North Korea released a scathing statement after the South praised President Trump’s intervention in the region.
Kim has threatened to use nuclear bombs against mainland US and has labelled Trump an “aggressor”.
North Korea told South Korea that it will make its decision on the Olympic meeting at a later date.
On January 20 the International Olympic Committee will meet in Lausanne, Switzerland over North Korean inclusion.
The IOC said members ”will take a series of essential decisions,” including the number and names of North Korean athletes to participate in PyeongChang.
Pyongyang and Seoul have been locked in a tense standoff since the Korean War ended in 1953 in a military stalemate between the two sides.