جريدة صيدونيانيوز.نت / The Guadian: Kim Jong-un's sister arrives in South Korea for Winter Olympics

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Kim Jong-un's sister arrives in South Korea for Winter Olympics

Kim Yo-jong is the first member of Pyongyang’s ruling dynasty to set foot on rival soil since the Korean war

Agence France-Presse

Fri 9 Feb 2018 06.55 GMT

Kim Yo-jong is escorted by South Korean security guards at Incheon international airport. Photograph: Yonhap/Reuters

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister has landed in the South, becoming the first member of Pyongyang’s ruling dynasty to set foot in the rival country since the Korean war.

Kim Yo-jong is part of a high-level diplomatic delegation led by the North’s ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong-nam – the highest level official ever to go to the South – as the Winter Olympics trigger a diplomatic rapprochement between the rivals.
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Their white Ilyushin-62 jet – marked in Korean script “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”, the North’s official name, and its tailfin emblazoned with a Northern emblem – touched down at Incheon airport near Seoul.

The last member of the Kim family to set foot in Seoul was Yo Jong’s grandfather Kim Il-sung, the North’s founder, after his forces invaded in 1950 and the capital fell.

Three years later the conflict ended with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula divided by the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone and the two sides technically in a state of war.
Kim Yo-jong at Incheon airport.
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Kim Yo-jong at Incheon airport. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

Now the North is subject to multiple rounds of UN security council sanctions over its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, while the democratic South has risen to become the world’s 11th-largest economy.

Kim Yong-nam and Kim Yo-jong, both of them in dark coats with fur collars, were met by the South’s unification minister and other officials.
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Their trip is the diplomatic high point of an Olympics-driven rapprochement between the two Koreas.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has pushed the Games as a “peace Olympics” that will open a door for dialogue to alleviate tensions on the peninsula and seek to persuade Pyongyang to give up its atomic ambitions.

The delegation was due to take a high-speed train to Pyeongchang, where the Olympics opening ceremony would be held later Friday, and attended by the US vice-president, Mike Pence, and the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe.

But all eyes are on Yo Jong – a key member of the Kim dynasty, which has ruled the impoverished, isolated nation with an iron fist and pervasive personality cult through three generations.