OPERA star Suzannah Clarke will perform at a festival in North Korea, after taking advice from the Foreign Office.

Ms Clarke, from Normanby, near Middlesbrough, will take part in four concerts in the capital Pyongyang as part of an international Friendship Festival.

The soprano has taken advice from the Foreign Office because of strained international relations between the West and North Korea.

Ms Clarke, a cultural ambassador for Middlesbrough, said she felt she could not turn down the invitation from organisers to fly to Pyongyang as she had recently sung in Korean for the North Korean 1966 World Cup football team.

The team visited Middlesbrough Football Club's Riverside Stadium, where Boro fan Ms Clarke performed the Friendship song in Korean. The team gave her a badge depicting the corolla horse, a symbol of their country.

Ms Clarke, who will wear the badge on her trip, will go to North Korea with her accompanist, Michael Robinson, and promoter Terry Noel. The BBC is planning to join the group to make a documentary about the visit.

She said: "Music often helps to promote friendship and can provide a bridge between people and nations. This is a festival about friendship and I am going to North Korea as a singer, not as a politician.

"The British Government and the North Koreans both want to talk and I sincerely hope that through visits of this kind ordinary people like myself can play a part, however small, in helping to foster good relations."

The Foreign Office said it was happy for the visit to take place.