North Korea to send cheerleaders to Olympics but Japan sees little to applaud

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea will send a 230-strong cheering squad to the Winter Olympics in the South next month, Seoul said on Wednesday after both sides held talks amid a thaw in inter-Korean ties and as Japan urged caution over the North’s “charm offensive”.

The PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games logo is seen at the the Alpensia Ski Jumping Centre in Pyeongchang, South Korea, September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski - RC111950C6E0

North and South Korea have been talking since last week - for the first time in more than two years - about the Olympics, offering a respite from a months-long standoff over the North’s missile and nuclear programs, which it conducts in defiance of U.N. sanctions.

Twenty nations meeting in the Canadian city of Vancouver agreed on Tuesday to consider tougher sanctions to press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned the North it could trigger a military response if it did not choose dialogue.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said the world should not be naive about North Korea’s “charm offensive” over the Olympics.

“It is not the time to ease pressure, or to reward North Korea,” Kono said. “The fact that North Korea is engaging in dialogue could be interpreted as proof that the sanctions are working.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has refused to give up development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States in spite of increasingly severe U.N. sanctions, raising fears of a new war on the Korean peninsula. The North has fired test-fired missiles over Japan.

In state media this week, the North warned the South of spoiling inter-Korean ties by insisting it gives up its nuclear weapons.

“We will work actively to improve North-South Korean relations but will not stand still to actions that are against unification,” the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.

The South’s Unification Ministry said the two sides exchanged opinions on several issues, including the size of the North Korean athletics team and joint cultural events.