内容摘要：By Kim Bo-eun, Joint Press CorpsNorth Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister, Kim Yo-jong, will be a mem

By Kim Bo-eun, Joint Press Corps

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's sister, Kim Yo-jong, will be a member of the high-level delegation that will arrive in the South, Friday, for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, the unification ministry said Wednesday.

The sister will be the first member of North Korea's ruling family to visit the South since the division of the two Koreas.

The delegation will be led by North Korea's nominal head of state Kim Yong-nam who is president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly. Other members of the delegation include National Sports Guidance Committee Chairman Choe Hwi, and Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland. They will be accompanied by 16 officials and three reporters.

The scheduled visit by Kim Yo-jong, a member of the Workers' Party political bureau, is seen as reflecting that Pyongyang is serious in making progress in inter-Korean relations. Attention is also growing over whether Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, will meet during their visit to South Korea. Ivanka Trump is set to attend the Games' closing ceremony. However, the high-level delegation from the North is only likely to visit the South from Friday through Sunday.

"It appears North Korea has taken into consideration cases of other nations in which family members have been designated to pay visit to the Olympics as delegates," the unification ministry said.

The ministry said the Koreas will finalize the details of the North Korean high-level delegation's stay through the Panmunjeom communication channel.

Meanwhile, a 280-member North Korean delegation led by Sports Minister Kim Il-guk arrived in the South for the Olympics, Wednesday.

The delegation is comprised of a 229-member cheerleading squad, a 26-member taekwondo demonstration team, 21 reporters and four North Korean National Olympic Committee officials, including Kim.

The team arrived at around 9:31 a.m., via a land route and headed to Gangwon Province.

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Earlier, a 140-member artistic troupe and athletes competing in the Games _ including women ice hockey players who will play on a joint team _ came to the South. A total of 473 North Koreans have arrived for the Olympics so far.

The artistic troupe that arrived Tuesday disembarked from the ferry Mangyongbong-92 the following day to head to the Gangneung Art Center for rehearsals for its performance today.

The vessel arrived at the South's Mukho Port around 5 p.m. and troupe members had been scheduled to go straight to Gangneung to prepare for their performances.

However, they did not disembark from the vessel until Wednesday morning.

This appears to have been due to anti-North rallies staged by ultra conservative groups here.

The groups called for them to return to the North, burning a North Korean flag, a "unification flag" showing a unified Korean peninsula, and a photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, while clashing with police.

Meanwhile, some liberal groups welcomed the troupe's arrival.

The North's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) took issue with the protest.

"An unacceptable ridiculous farce putting the same people (of the North and South) in confrontation mode against each other was staged in front of our artistic troupe that arrived at Mukho Port for performances for the Winter Olympics," the KCNA said.

"It insulted our dignity and protesters went as far as committing the atrocity of burning our flag as well as the unification flag," it added.

"Instead of handing flower bouquets to delegates that came to celebrate an event the people, they have committed atrocities equivalent of spitting on a smiling face, making them human trash and ignorant and evil gangsters," the article added.