North Korea to send cheerleaders to Winter Games

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Bengaluru, January 17: North Korea will send a 230-strong cheering squad to the 2018 Winter Olympics to be held in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang from February 9 to 25, after after both sides held talks amid a thaw in inter-Korean ties and as Japan urged caution over the North's "charm offensive"

North and South Korea have been talking since last week - for the first time in more than two years - about the Olympics, offering a respite from a months-long standoff over the North's missile and nuclear programmes, which it conducts in defiance of UN sanctions.

Twenty nations meeting in the Canadian city of Vancouver agreed to consider tougher sanctions to press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned the North it could trigger a military response if it did not choose dialogue.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said in Vancouver that the world should not be naive about North Korea's "charm offensive" over the Olympics.

"It is not the time to ease pressure, or to reward North Korea," Kono said. "The fact that North Korea is engaging in dialogue could be interpreted as proof that the sanctions are working."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has refused to give up development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States in spite of increasingly severe UN sanctions, raising fears of a new war on the Korean peninsula. The North has fired test-fired missiles over Japan.

In state media this week, the North warned the South of spoiling inter-Korean ties by insisting it gives up its nuclear weapons.

"We will work actively to improve North-South Korean relations but will not stand still to actions that are against unification," the North's Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.

The South's Unification Ministry said the two sides exchanged opinions on several issues, including the size of the North Korean athletics team and joint cultural events.

Earlier, officials from North and South agreed a 140-person North Korean orchestra would perform in South Korea during the Games. Pyongyang is also planning to send a large delegation in addition to the athletes and orchestra.

Athletes from the two Koreas have paraded together at the opening and closing ceremonies of major international games before, although it has not been seen since the 2007 Asian Winter Games in China after relations chilled under nearly a decade of conservative rule in the South.

(With inputs from Agencies)