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A South Korean advance review team arrives at the Donghae Highway Transit office at the border of South and North Korea. The team will review venues at the Mt. Kumgang Joint Cultural Festival and Masikryong Ski Resort. Lee Joo-tae

The schedule and venues have been set for performances by North Korean performers to celebrate the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Athletes from the North Korean women’s hockey team are also scheduled to arrive in the South around a week earlier than expected for joint training as part of the first-ever unified Korean team in Olympic history.

In an “announcement on performance group issues” sent on the evening of Jan. 23, Pyongyang said the two celebratory performances for the Pyeongchang Olympics by the roughly 140-member Samjiyon performance group would be taking place on Feb. 8 and 11, the South Korean Ministry of Unification announced. The announcement also revealed that the Feb. 8 performance on the eve of the Olympic opening ceremony would be held at Gangneung Art Center, while the Feb. 11 performance would take place in Haeorum Theater inside of the National Theater of Korea in Seoul’s Jangchung neighborhood.

Previously, a preliminary review team for the performance group, headed by Samjiyon performance group director Hyon Song-wol, visited Gangneung and Seoul on Jan. 21 and 22 to review prospective venues.

“The North Korean side informed us that the performers will be arriving South on Feb. 6 via the Gyeongui railway line and returning North on Feb. 12 by the same route,” a Unification Ministry official said.

“The information in the North’s announcement was more or less identical to what was discussed when the preliminary review team visited,” the official added.

Another announcement sent by the North the same evening to Minister of Unification Cho Myoung-gyon, South Korea’s senior representative at high-level inter-Korean talks, said that in addition to an advance group to be sent from North Korea on Jan. 25, fifteen people connected with the women’s ice hockey team would also be traveling South, including a coach, 12 athletes, and two support staff.

The announcement appeared to be in response to a South Korean telephone message that afternoon to the head of the North Korean Committee delegation to the inter-Korean talks, Committee for Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland chairman Ri Son-gwon, asking that North Korean women’s ice hockey athletes joining the unified inter-Korean team visit the South as soon as possible for joint training.

In a Jan. 22 press conference at the National Athletes’ Village in Jincheon, North Chungcheong Province, women’s ice hockey team coach Sarah Murray stressed that there were “only sixteen days left” until the Olympics.

“There isn’t much time for the unified team members to coordinate. The North Korean athletes will have to come quickly,” she said.

Murray added that a Feb. 4 warm-up match with Sweden at Seonhak International Ice Rink in Incheon would be “the last and only warm-up before the main event at the Olympics.”

“We will be competing as a unified inter-Korean team,” she continued.

North Korean athletes competing in other events at the Pyeongchang Olympics besides women’s ice hockey, including figure skating, short track speed skating, Alpine skiing, and cross country, will reportedly be arrived in South Korea on Feb. 1 as scheduled.

By Jung In-hwan, staff reporter

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