SEOUL, South Korea — Senior North Korean officials, including the only sister of the North’s leader, arrived in South Korea on Friday, starting a three-day trip that is to include a meeting with South Korea’s president, the highest-level inter-Korean contact in more than a decade.

The 22-member government delegation, including Kim Yo-jong, the sister of Kim Jong-un, whose family has ruled North Korea since its founding seven decades ago, traveled by private plane from the North.

Although the delegation is officially led by Kim Yong-nam, who as president of the Presidium of the North Korean Parliament is the North’s nominal head of state, it is Ms. Kim’s inclusion that has made the trip highly symbolic.

The two were greeted at Incheon International Airport by Cho Myoung-gyon, who as South Korea’s unification minister is in charge of relations with the North. At an airport reception room, Mr. Kim, who is about three times Ms. Kim’s age, asked her to sit first, a reversal of the tradition of deferring to elders that was seen as a signifier of Ms. Kim’s status.