North Korean leader's sister to visit South Korea for Winter Olympics

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's 28-year-old sister will make her debut on the world stage when she visits South Korea to attend the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics on Friday, Seoul's Unification Ministry said.

The ministry added that Pyongyang told Seoul that Kim Yo Jong would accompany Kim Yong Nam, North Korea's nominal head of state, along with Choe Hwi, chairman of the National Sports Guidance Committee, and Ri Son Gwon, who led inter-Korean talks last month.

Kim Yo Jong would be the first member of the Kim family, born on the sacred Mount Paektu, which is a centrepiece of the North's idolisation and propaganda campaign, to cross the border to the South.

TRT World's sports correspondent Lance Santos has been given rare access to film at the border between North and South Korea.

Kim Yo Jong's inclusion in the delegation is "meaningful" as she is not only the sister of the country's leader, but has a significant position as a senior official of the ruling Workers' Party, the South's presidential Blue House said.

"It shows the North's resolve to defuse tension on the Korean peninsula," Blue House spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told a news briefing.

But the trip could become a source of contention between Seoul and Washington, as she was blacklisted last year by the US Treasury Department over human rights abuses and censorship, while Choe faces a travel ban under UN Security Council sanctions.

Kim Yo Jong is vice director of the party's Propaganda and Agitation Department, which handles ideological messaging through the media, arts and culture. Choe had previously worked for the same body.

In 2016, South Korea's former spy chief said Kim Yo Jong was seen "abusing power", punishing propaganda department executives for "minor mistakes".

"One of the positives of her visit is that she is someone able to deliver a direct message on behalf of Kim Jong Un," said Shin Beom-chul, a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul.

"What is problematic is that she's coming with Choe Hwi. ... This raises worries that North Korea likely intends to use this Olympics as a propaganda tool, rather than a possible opening to meaningful dialogue with South Korea."

The opening ceremony will also be attended by US Vice President Mike Pence, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other world leaders.

Pence said, after talks with Abe in Tokyo on Wednesday, that Washington would soon unveil its toughest-ever economic sanctions on North Korea, calling the country the "most tyrannical and oppressive regime on the planet".

Choi Kang, vice president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said: "The United States would be unhappy to see South Korea trying to undermine all the rigid sanctions that it had worked so hard to put in place by granting exemptions for the sake of the Olympics."

"Personally, Pence would feel uncomfortable just being in the same place with the North Koreans." **attribute this quote**