Pro-Pyongyang opera company to perform in Seoul for 1st time+

Asian Economic News, Dec 4, 2000

TOKYO, Nov. 28 Kyodo

A Tokyo-based opera company affiliated with a pro-Pyongyang Korean residents' group said Tuesday it will perform in South Korea next month for the first time since it was established in 1955.

The 82 members of the Kumgangsan Opera Troupe will stay one week in Seoul at the invitation of a South Korean civic group and give four performances there beginning Dec. 11, troupe officials told a news conference.

The performers, members of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryun), are mostly third-generation Korean residents in Japan in their 20s, the officials said.

The troupe, based in the city of Kodaira, west of downtown Tokyo, has been performing traditional Korean dance and songs across Japan and North Korea. Its name was given to it by the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, they said.

The troupe's head, Li Jang Jun, said, ''We want to fulfill the goal stated in the joint declaration (signed by the two Koreas in June.) Our performance will feature a pageant under the themes of 'four seasons of Mt. Kumgang.' It is a coincidence that the mountain has recently become a symbolic place where South Korean people can visit.''

Mt. Kumgang in the eastern part of North Korea is a popular tourist spot. More than 300,000 sightseers from South Korea have visited the mountain since the Hyundai group began tours there in 1998.

About 5,000 people are expected to attend the performances, scheduled to be broadcast by South Korean television, according to the troupe.

Cultural exchanges between the two Koreas have recently been increasing. A student group from Pyongyang performed in South Korea earlier this year.

This fall, Chongryun dispatched delegations to South Korea for a homecoming for the first time in half a century. The visits took place after South and North Korea agreed during ministerial talks in July in Seoul to encourage visits to the South by pro-Pyongyang Koreans living in Japan.