North Korea to send 230-person 'cheering squad' to Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics

North Korea is to send a 230-person cheering squad to the Winter Olympics in South Korea next month.

Seoul disclosed details of Pyongyang’s planned delegation after the two countries held pre-Games talks amid a thaw in relations.

But Japan urged caution over the North’s “charm offensive”, warning it was “not the time to ease pressure” on leader Kim Jong-un and his missile and nuclear weapons programme.

North and South Korea opened talks on the Olympics last week, the first time the two sides have been in dialogue for two years. Preparations for the Pyeongchang Games have offered respite from a lengthy stand-off over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, which it is pursuing in defiance of United Nations sanctions.

Twenty nations meeting in the Canadian city of Vancouver agreed on Tuesday to consider tougher sanctions to press North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons programme.

Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, 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 Pyongyang’s “charm offensive” over the Olympics.

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

Pyongyang has refused to give up development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the US in spite of increasingly severe UN sanctions and has test-fired missiles over Japan, raising fears of a new war on the Korean peninsula.

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.

Seoul has proposed a joint ice hockey team, which triggered an angry response from athletes in the South suddenly being told they may have to play alongside total strangers.

“I don’t know if it will happen, but a joint team will be a good opportunity for ice hockey to shed its sorrow as a less-preferred sport as many Koreans will take interest,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in told players during a visit to a training centre.

The number of petitions to the presidential Blue House’s website opposing a unified team climbed to more than 100 this week, with the most popular petition gaining more than 11,000 signatures.

“This isn’t the same as gluing a broken plate together,” said one.

Paik Hak-soon, the director of the Centre for North Korean studies at Sejong Institute in South Korea, said North Korea was using its all-female cheerleading squad to draw attention to its apparent co-operative spirit.

“Seeing good results in competitions thanks to the cheering squad would enable the North Koreans to say they contributed to a successful Olympics and the South Korean government would likely agree,” said Mr Paik.

“In the end, they are using this old tactic to get to Washington through Seoul.”

On Tuesday, officials from North and South agreed a 140-person North Korean orchestra would perform in South Korea during the Games. Pyongyang is also planning to send a large delegation in addition to the athletes and orchestra.

Reclusive North Korea and rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy the South, Japan and their major ally, the US.

China, which did not attend the Vancouver meeting, said on Wednesday the gathering showed a Cold War mentality and would only undermine a settlement of the North Korea problem.