K-Pop performers turn diplomatic envoys with North Korea concerts

THEY’VE won over buttonedup investors at a banking conference with their jingles about teenage love, but the KPop girl band Red Velvet is facing what may be its toughest audience yet: North Korea.

The chart-topping starlets performed on Sunday in front of an audience including North Korean leader Kim Jong un and his wife, with 10 other South Korean music groups, at the first of two concerts this week in Pyongyang. It’s the latest overture in Seoul’s decadeslong cultural diplomacy push to soften ties with its nucleararmed neighbour.

Taking place four weeks before an historic meeting between the two countries’ leaders, the music tour could provide a test of whether North Korea’s attitude to the rest of the world is truly thawing.

As they belted out their dance tunes to about 1,500 members of the North Korean elite at the East Pyongyang Grand Theatre, Red Velvet was hoping for a less frosty reception than those that have gone before them.

“The whole purpose of cultural exchange is to open the gates for better relations between the North and the South, which have been strained for a decade,” said Kang Dong-wan, a professor at Dong-a University and a leader of the Busan Hana Centre, an institute that helps North Korean defectors in the South Korean port city of Busan. “There is a strong political motive to boost the mood ahead of the summit.”

When K-Pop boy band Shinhwa performed in North Korea in 2003, they had met with silence and stony stares. — Bloomberg