N. Korea begins practice for Arirang festival: tour agency

(ATTN: RECASTS headline, lead, UPDATES with Beijing operator's quotes on ongoing
practice, number of foreign visitors)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Yonhap) -- North Korea plans to host its Arirang Festival, the
world's largest gymnastics show designed to attract foreign tourists, from August
to mid-October and has already begun preparations for the mass spectacle, a tour
agency said Tuesday.
Pyongyang has intermittently held the annual festival, named after Korea's famous
folk song, since 2002, mobilizing some 100,000 people for synchronized
acrobatics, gymnastics, dances and flip-card mosaic animations.
The months-long show, also held in 2005 and 2008, is believed to bring in
badly-needed foreign currency and promote the regime's socialism.
"Info from Pyongyang is that there are practices starting -- although it is still
very cold there so not full scale, I think," Simon Cockerell from Beijing-based
Koryo Tours, which exclusively operates tours to North Korea, said in an email.
Koryo's U.S. branch in Alabama said on its website that this year's festival will
be held from Aug. 1 through Oct. 10, the same dates as the last couple of years.
Small groups now practice the moves until they are expanded to full scale
rehearsals just before the event starts, Cockerell said.
"People practice even when the mass games (aren't) confirmed," he said, "But it
is definitely sign that they will go ahead though and therefore we are offering a
full range of tours," Cockerell said.
The 90-minute extravaganza is performed every evening except Sundays.
North Korea skipped the festival in 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007 without giving
reasons. Seoul officials say some of these years were when the country was badly
hit by floods from the summer monsoon season. In 2006, Pyongyang conducted its
missile tests in July and a nuclear test in October.
There is no official data on foreign visitors, but Cockerell said an estimated
5,000 tourists from western countries -- including 600 American citizens -- have
watched it, along with several tens of thousands of Chinese and thousands of
South Koreans.
North Korea's mobilization of children has raised concerns of abuses of their
rights. In its latest report in January, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the
Child said it is "concerned that children spend a significant proportion of their
time allocated for instruction for the purposes of agricultural work, festivity
preparations including the Arirang festival."
Cockerell denied the practice is forced labor. Children try to get into the mass
games as "a great honor for them," he said.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)