Photos showed a smiling Hyon shaking heads with a South Korean official upon arrival at the border.
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A member of the popular all-girl group Moranbong, Hyon was once the subject of unsubstantiated rumors that she dated Kim Jong Un.
Hyon was the subject of lurid 2013 reports in the South that she and around a dozen other state musicians had been executed for appearing in porn movies.
The 7-member inspection team led by singer Hyon Song-wol is now at a hotel in eastern Seoul enjoying dinner before they head back to North Korea. And her presence sent some South Koreans, and worldwide media outlets, into a flurry.
In a commentary entitled “the rubbish media that should be dumped into slop bucket of history”, the Rodong accused right-leaning publications in the South of publishing “distorted reports which would bring terrible consequences” and “inciting mistrust and confrontation among the nation”. Another station analyzed her choice of coffee.
The Koreas agreed in high-level talks January 9 to hold musical performances by a North Korean “art troupe” during the Pyeongchang Games.
North Korea’s delegation, including sports minister Kim Il Guk, did not stay to brief media after signing the agreement for the cameras.
The joint session will also include a joint cultural event in the Mount Kumgang area. Now, Pyongyang’s top pop diva is a senior ruling party official and a surprise headliner in the run-up to the South Korean Winter Olympics.
“The local media and news industries should get their stories straight”, they chanted.
Throughout the trip, Hyon shrugged off the South Korean press corps’ questions. Come Tuesday a role reversal for the two Koreas.
Hong Jun-pyo, Chairman of the main conservative Liberty Korea Party, said having the North’s Olympic advance team in the country was turning the Games into the “Pyongyang Olympics”.
“There are multiple levels of media distortion, because cameras love attractive people and fire”, he said.
The seven-member team is led by Hyon Song-wol, head of the North’s Samjiyon Orchestra, and known as one of the most influential women in the secretive communist nation.
The 22 North Korean athletes will march together with South Korean players under a single “unification flag” depicting their peninsula during the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang. “Some of them were successful, others were not, but the talks could last for months, while here all issues were resolved within slightly more than 10 days, and we can see that everything is developing according to plans”, he explained.
Seoul and the Games organisers have sought to promote Pyeongchang as a “Peace Olympics” to open a door for dialogue with the nuclear-armed North, which has traded threats with the U.S. over the past year.
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“The IOC today has taken exceptional decisions and has allocated additional quotas for 22 athletes from the NOC of the DPRK who will compete in three sports and five disciplines”, announced Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee.
