SEOUL ¨C They won over buttoned-up investors at a banking conference with their jingles about teenage love, but the K-pop girl band Red Velvet is about to face what may be its toughest audience yet: North Korea.
The chart-topping starlets will perform Sunday with 10 other South Korean music groups at the first of two concerts this week in Pyongyang. It is the latest overture in Seoul¡¯s decades-long cultural diplomacy push, aimed at softening ties with its closed off and nuclear-armed neighbor.
Taking place four weeks before a historic meeting between the two countries¡¯ leaders, the music tour could provide a test of whether North Korea¡¯s attitude to the rest of the world is truly thawing. As they belt out their dance tunes ¡°Red Flavor¡± and ¡°Bad Boy¡± to about 1,500 members of North Korea¡¯s elite at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater on Sunday night, Red Velvet will be hoping for a less frosty reception than those that have gone before them.
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