By Kim Bo-eun
The high-level North Korean delegation including Kim Jong-un’s sister Kim Yo-jong will arrive via a “private plane” in the South, Friday, to attend the opening ceremony for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
The 23-member delegation will depart from Pyongyang, take a West sea route, and land at Incheon International Airport around 1:30 p.m., the unification ministry said.
The plane will not stay at the airport, but come back on Sunday to take the delegation back to the North.
A unification ministry official said only aircraft of Air Koryo are subject to sanctions. Sanctions have been placed by South Korea and the U.S. on the North Korean airline.
“The government is abiding by the international community’s sanctions on North Korea regarding Pyongyang’s participation in the Olympics, and is closely negotiating with the U.S. and the UN on the matter,” foreign ministry spokesman Noh Kyu-duk said in a briefing, Thursday.
The delegation is led by North Korea’s nominal head of state Kim Yong-nam, who is the president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly. It also includes Choe Hwi, chairman of the State Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission and Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country.
Pyongyang is under multiple sanctions by individual states as well as the international community for its external military provocations and human rights violations of its people, but it has been exempted from a number of them on the occasion of the Olympics.
Due to its participation in the Olympics, South Korea and the U.S. have given several exemptions and the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) is set to do the same.
The UNSC member states are considering one for Choe Hwi. Choe was blacklisted due to his role in controlling the state media, subjecting him to a travel ban and asset freeze.
The permanent mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations proposed to the Security Council a day earlier that the 23-member high-level North Korean delegation set to visit the South for the Olympics be exempted from sanctions.
It stated the exemption “will serve as a timely opportunity to reduce tension on the Korean peninsula and beyond by promoting an environment conducive to a peaceful, diplomatic, and political solution concerning the situation on the peninsula.”
Ambassador Karel Van Oosterom of the Netherlands, chairman of the U.N. committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea, proposed the exemption to be approved by Security Council members. It will be automatically approved if no objections are filed by member states by Friday 5 a.m.
Earlier, South Korea made an exception to a sanction banning vessels departing from North Korea to enter its waters and ports, to enable the Mangyongbong-92 to bring a large-scale artist troupe to the South and serve as the accommodation for members here. The vessel arrived at Mukho Port near Gangneung in Gangwon Province, Tuesday.
An exemption was also made for a chartered plane of a South Korean airline that brought North Korean athletes from Wonsan to the South, after Seoul discussed the matter with Washington. U.S. sanctions placed in September last year ban aircraft departing from North Korea to land in the U.S. within a time period of 180 days. Although only the chartered plane would have been banned from entering the U.S. within the time frame, it was exempted from the sanction, considering the airlines’ reputation could be affected.