South Korean lawmakers protested Friday over a visit by a top North Korean general for the Pyeongchang Olympics, labelling him a war criminal over the 2010 sinking of a warship and calling for his execution.
Kim Yong Chol will head an eight-member delegation to arrive on Sunday for the Games’ closing ceremony — which will also be attended by US President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
Kim is widely blamed for a spate of attacks against the South including the torpedoing nearly eight years ago of the Seoul’s Cheonan corvette, with the loss of 46 lives.
Some 70 lawmakers of the conservative Liberty Korea Party staged a protest outside the presidential Blue House, urging President Moon Jae-in to scrap the visit.
“Kim Yong Chol is a diabolical war criminal who attacked the South… He deserves death by hanging in the street,” the party’s parliamentary floor leader Kim Sung-tae said in a statement.
“Even if the heavens split in two, we cannot allow such a heinous criminal — who must be sliced to death — to be invited to the Olympics closing ceremony,” he said.
Unification ministry spokesman Baek Tae-hyun said the South Korean government was aware of widespread misgivings about Kim Yong Chol’s visit to the South, but accepted it as the “chances for improving inter-Korean ties and a peace settlement might be improved”.
The Pyeongchang Olympics have seen a charm offensive by the North, which sent leader Kim Jong Un’s sister to the opening ceremony as it seeks to loosen sanctions against it and weaken the alliance between Seoul and Washington.
US Vice President Mike Pence was also present for the start of the Games, and sat only a few seats away from Kim Yo Jong, without exchanging words with her — having earlier visited a memorial to the Cheonan and condemned the North for abusing human rights.
Officials from both Seoul and Washington say there is little or no prospect of a meeting between Ivanka Trump — a businesswoman and former model turned key adviser to her father — and the North Korean representatives.
But Seoul authorities are still struggling over how to manage their presence at the same event.
“At the closing ceremony their lines of movement will not cross,” a senior official of Seoul’s presidential Blue House told Yonhap news agency. “Authorities are in agony over protocol and the seating plan at the closing ceremony.”