Two Koreas Meet Monday to Discuss Pyongyang’s Sending of Art Troupe to Olympics

A South Korean soldier looks at North Korean counterparts through the window of a conference room in Panmunjom, Korea. (Reuters)
A South Korean soldier looks at North Korean counterparts through the window of a conference room in Panmunjom, Korea. (Reuters)
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Two Koreas Meet Monday to Discuss Pyongyang’s Sending of Art Troupe to Olympics

A South Korean soldier looks at North Korean counterparts through the window of a conference room in Panmunjom, Korea. (Reuters)
A South Korean soldier looks at North Korean counterparts through the window of a conference room in Panmunjom, Korea. (Reuters)

Officials from South and North Korea will meet on Monday to discuss Pyongyang’s plan to send a performing art troupe to next month’s Winter Olympic games, hosted in Pyeongchang.

The South’s Unification Ministry announced that the North was apparently keen to discuss logistics of the performers' trip to the South before planning its athletes and supporters' attendance at the Games.

"The government informed the North that our delegation will come to Panmunjom on January 15," the ministry said in a statement.

Seoul's Unification Ministry said it asked Pyongyang to promptly respond on when further talks can be held to discuss details of sending North Korean athletes and other officials to Games.

The North confirmed it would attend next month's Olympics in the South at a rare inter-Korean meeting last week, following months of tensions over its nuclear weapons program.

Both sides will each dispatch four delegates including art officials to next week’s talks.

Hyon Song-Wol, leader of the popular Moranbong band, is one of four North Korean delegates to attend the talks in the truce village of Panmunjom on Monday.

The Moranbong band is an all-female music group performing pop, rock and fusion styles, whose members are reportedly selected by the leader Kim Jong-Un himself.

Seoul's delegation will be an official from its culture ministry, the head of the Korean Symphony Orchestra and its art director and an official from Unification Ministry, the ministry said.

The development comes a day after South Korea's vice sports minister Roh Tae-Kang said the South had proposed marching with the North at the Olympics' opening ceremony and also forming a joint women's ice hockey team during the high-level talks which took place on Tuesday.

A joint march at the opening ceremony would be a stunning statement for the Games dubbed the "Peace Olympics", which will open about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the heavily fortified Korean border on February 9.

North Korea boycotted the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, meaning Pyeongchang will be the first Olympics they have attended in the South.

Separately, the International Olympic Committee has proposed a meeting on January 20 at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, involving the rival Koreas to discuss North Korea's participation in Pyeongchang.



French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
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French Intelligence Chief: No Certainty on Whereabouts of Iran’s Uranium Stocks

An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)
An Iranian national flag is fixed to the arm of a statue at the monument dedicated to the Palestinian struggle in Palestine Square in central Tehran on July 8, 2025, as an anti-Israeli billboard is displayed on the facade of a building depicting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with text in Persian and Hebrew reading "Netanyahu lost another war; you fell victim to Bibi's political games; Where will the next failure to stay in power occur?" (AFP)

France's intelligence chief said on Tuesday that all aspects of Iran's nuclear program have been pushed back several months after American and Israeli air strikes, but there is uncertainty over where its highly-enriched uranium stocks are.

"The Iranian nuclear program is the material, it is highly-enriched uranium, it is a capacity to convert this uranium from the gaseous phase to the solid phase. It is the manufacturing of the core and it is the delivery," Nicolas Lerner, who heads the DGSE intelligence service, told LCI television.

"Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged and that the nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months."

Lerner, who was speaking for the first time on national television, said a small part of Iran's highly-enriched uranium stockpile had been destroyed, but the rest remained in the hands of the authorities.

"Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It's very important. We won't have the capacity to trace it (the stocks)," Lerner said.

Other intelligence assessments have also suggested that Iran retains a hidden stockpile of enriched uranium and the technical capacity to rebuild.

Lerner echoed those comments saying there was a possibility Iran could press ahead with a clandestine program with smaller enrichment capacities.

"That's why France is so attached to finding a diplomatic solution to this nuclear crisis," he said.