Seoul: An aircraft carrying the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the country’s ceremonial head of state Kim Yong Nam landed in the South on Friday, television pictures showed, in a historic first.
The white Ilyushin-62 aircraft, marked in Korean script "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", the North's official name, and its tailfin emblazoned with a Northern emblem, touched down at Incheon airport near Seoul.
On board were Kim Yo Jong, the first member of the North’s ruling dynasty to visit the South since the Korean War ended with a ceasefire in 1953, and Kim Yong Nam, the leader of its delegation to the Winter Olympics in the South.
Their visit is the diplomatic high point of an Olympics-driven rapprochement between the two sides of the divided peninsula, which remain technically at war.
The North is subject to multiple rounds of UN Security Council sanctions over its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, while the democratic South has risen to become the world's 11th-largest economy.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has pushed the Games as a "peace Olympics" that will open a door for dialogue to alleviate military tensions on the peninsula and seek to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions.
The North Korean delegation was due to travel on to Pyeongchang for the Olympics opening ceremony later Friday, which will be attended by US Vice President Mike Pence and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
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