The head of a hugely popular North Korean girl band has crossed the heavily fortified border into South Korea to check the preparations for her performance during next month’s Winter Olympics.

Appearing live on South Korean television, Hyon Song-wol remained silent as she walked past a crowd of reporters, onlookers and a barrage of camera flashes, before boarding an express train at Seoul’s railway station for the eastern city of Gangneung, where the art troupe she also leads is to perform during the Pyeongchang Games.

Hyon is the lead singer of the Moranbong Band, who were handpicked by Kim Jong-un and serve as the “soft” public face of the regime. Its members, in short skirts or military uniforms, dance and sing odes to Kim.

Hyon has been the subject of intense South Korean media attention since she attended last week’s border talks. The 140-member Samjiyon art troupe will give two performances – one in Seoul and the other in Gangneung, where part of the Games will take place – with Hyon as the leader.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Moranbong perform in Pyongyang in 2015. Photograph: Wong Maye-E/AP

The performances will be the first by a North Korean group in South Korea since 2002. The group will play folk songs and classic masterpieces that are well known to both countries and fit in with the theme of unification.

Hyon’s arrival came hours after the International Olympic Committee allowed 22 North Korean athletes to take part in the Olympics.

North and South Korea to march under one flag at Winter Olympics 'peace games' Read more

Among the 22 are 12 women who will join South Korea’s female hockey team in the two Koreas’ first unified Olympic team. North Koreans will also compete in figure skating, short track speed skating, Alpine skiing and cross-country skiing.

The North Korean athletes will march together with South Korean players under a single “unification flag” depicting their peninsula during the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang.

The current mood of reconciliation between the South and the North came after Kim abruptly expressed his willingness to improve ties and send a delegation to the Olympics during his annual new year address. But critics dismissed Kim’s overture as a tactic to use improved ties with Seoul to weaken the US-led international sanctions over North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile programmes.

According to Seoul’s unification ministry, North Korea offered to send another advance team across the border on Thursday to look at accommodation facilities, the press centre and the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies. South Korea is to send its own advance team to North Korea on Tuesday to review logistics for a joint cultural event at Diamond Mountain and their non-Olympic skiers’ joint practices at the Masikryong ski resort, the ministry said.