North and South Korea have agreed in principle to field a joint women’s ice hockey team during next month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea.

The two countries have relayed their position to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

A South Korean sports ministry spokesman confirmed the two sides had reached an agreement over the games in Pyeongchang, saying they have been discussing the make-up of a unified women’s hockey team since last year.

The spokesman, Hwang Seong Un, said the matter would be discussed on Saturday when officials from the two Koreas and the IOC meet at IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

A joint team would require IOC approval.

If the move gets the green light, this would be the first unified Korean Olympic team.

Another South Korea official said the two countries would parade under a joint “unification flag” during the opening ceremony at the Games if they conduct a joint march.

Sports minister Do Jong-hwan made the comments during a meeting with MPs.

He said a joint march is one of the items to be discussed during the IOC-hosted meeting this weekend.

North Korea agreed last week to send a delegation to the Olympics in a conciliatory gesture amid animosities over its nuclear and missile tests.

South Korean officials want the rival Koreas to conduct a joint march and take other reconciliation steps during the Olympics in the hopes it will help ease tensions.

North Korea will also send a 140-member orchestra to the South during next month’s games, according to the unification ministry in Seoul. The North Korean orchestra will perform in Seoul and the eastern South Korean city of Gangneung.

Officials from the two Koreas – headed by Lee Woo-sung, from the South, and Kwon Hook Bong, from the North – met to work out details about North Korea’s plan to send an art troupe to the South during the Winter Olympics.

It came after a development that still shows their bitter animosities, as the North issued a veiled threat on Sunday indicating it could cancel its plans to send an Olympic delegation to protest what it called South Korea’s “sordid acts of chilling” the prospect for inter-Korean reconciliation.

The warning is relatively milder than the North’s typical fiery rhetoric and it did not appear to put the recent signs of warming Korean ties in imminent danger.

“They should know the train and bus carrying our delegation to the Olympics are still in Pyongyang,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. “The South Korean authorities had better ponder over what unfavourable results may be entailed by their impolite behaviour.”

The KCNA criticised South Korean President Moon Jae-in for crediting President Donald Trump for getting the North to sit down with the South.

Mr Trump has contended his tough stance helped persuade the North to hold talks. KCNA also accused South Korea of letting the United States deploy aircraft carriers and other strategic assets near the Korean Peninsula on the occasion of the Olympics.

Yesterday’s talks at the border village of Panmunjom focused on the make-up of an art troupe and when and where in South Korea they would perform, according to South Korean officials.

Drawing keen attention is whether the North would send its famous Moranbong Band, an all-female ensemble hand-picked by the North’s leader Kim Jong-un. One of the North Korean delegates at the talks is Hyon Song Wol, the head of the Moranbong Band, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry. Since its stage debut in 2012, the band is hugely popular at home and has been dubbed by outsiders as “North Korea’s only girl group” for its Western-style performances.

The band is one of the ways Kim had tried to project an image of youth and modernity since becoming leader in 2011, though expectations he might be different from his dictator father have faded after he executed top officials including his own uncle in an apparent effort to bolster his grip on power.

North Korea last week agreed to send an Olympic delegation and hold military talks aimed at reducing frontline animosities in its first formal talks with South Korea in about two years. They were both key steps the South asked North Korea to accept to improve ties between the countries.

The North has said its delegation to the Games being staged from February 9 to 25 in Pyeongchang would include an art troupe along with officials, athletes, cheerleaders, journalists and a taekwondo demonstration team. The International Olympic Committee plans to separately meet North and South Korean officials this weekend to discuss the North’s Olympic participation.

The reasons for North Korea’s softer approach are not clear, though some analysts say the North may be trying to divide Seoul and Washington as a way to weaken pressure and sanctions on the country. Others speculate the North wants to use the Olympics to show it is a normal country despite possessing nuclear weapons.

North Korea has insisted its talks with South Korea will not deal with its nuclear and missile programmes, saying those weapons primarily target the United States.

North Korea carried out nuclear and missile tests last year that triggered harsher UN sanctions and worldwide condemnation.