Warily, Seoul prepares to celebrate with North group

A group of 116 North Koreans will come to South Korea Wednesday for a commemoration of Korea's Liberation Day on Thursday.

A private organizing committee told the press Tuesday that the North Korean group would arrive on a North Korean aircraft at Incheon International Airport. The government has shown ambivalent feelings about the celebration, at first confining all ceremonies to inside the Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel, but then relenting. The committee said the group would attend a cultural performance and art exhibition and tour one of Seoul's royal palaces.

A similar event last year triggered controversy when some members of a South Korean delegation in Pyeongyang defied government orders and participated in events Seoul deemed subversive. The unification minister here was fired after the National Assembly passed a no-confidence motion in the wake of the commemoration.

The North Korean delegation includes officials from the North Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation, the General Federation of Trade Unions, the Union of Agricultural Working People and other civic groups; a performance troupe and journalists will also be in the group.

As a further indication of Seoul's nervousness, the event was scaled down to include only about 500 people in total from the originally planned 5,000. Two controversial South Korean organizations were excluded from the event.

by Lee Young-jong