‘North Korea’s Ivanka’ steals the show
PYEONGCHANG: When the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, decided to send a large delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea this month, the world feared he might steal the show.
If that was indeed his intention, he could not have chosen a better emissary than the one he sent: his only sister, Kim Yo-jong, whom news outlets in the South instantly dubbed “North Korea’s Ivanka”, likening her influence to that of Ivanka Trump on her father, President Donald Trump.
Much as Ms Trump has been when travelling with her father, Ms Kim was closely followed by the news media during her three-day visit to Seoul and to Pyeongchang, which is hosting the Olympics.
She flew back to North Korea on Sunday night.
Flashing a sphinxlike smile and without ever speaking in public, Ms Kim managed to outflank Mr Trump’s envoy to the Olympics, Vice-President Mike Pence, in the game of diplomatic image-making.
While Mr Pence came with an old message — that the United States would continue to ratchet up “maximum sanctions” until the North dismantled its nuclear arsenal — Ms Kim delivered messages of reconciliation as well as an unexpected invitation from her brother to the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, to visit Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
Ms Kim attracted attention wherever she turned up — at the opening ceremony, in the stands at the Olympic debut of the unified Korean women’s ice hockey team, and at a performance in Seoul by a North Korean art troupe.
But Mr Pence drew the greatest reaction for where he did not appear: most pointedly, at a dinner Mr Moon hosted before the opening ceremony.
That meant that he avoided spending much time with the North Korean delegation, including Kim Yong-nam, the country’s ceremonial head of state.
And while the unified Korean Olympic team received a standing ovation as they marched into the stadium Friday night, Mr Pence remained seated, which critics said was disrespectful of the athletes and his host, Mr Moon.
Mr Pence is playing “right into North Korea’s hands by making it look like the US is straying from its ally and actively undermining efforts for inter-Korean relations”, said Mintaro Oba, a former diplomat at the State Department specialising in the Koreas, who now works as a speechwriter in Washington.
Ms Kim, on the other hand, “is a very effective tip of the spear for the North Korean charm offensive”, Mr Oba said.
Analysts of Korean affairs said that Pence had missed an opportunity.
“I think it would have been really helpful to the conversation of denuclearization for the Pences to have appreciated the effort put into bringing team unified Korea into the stadium,” said Alexis Dudden, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut.
“And it wouldn’t have lessened the American position.”
She added, “The fact that he and Mrs Pence didn’t stand when the unified team came in was a new low in a bullying type of American diplomacy.”
In a pool report filed from Mr Pence’s flight to Alaska from Pyeongchang on Saturday night, a senior administration official said that the vice-president had not been trying to avoid the North Koreans so much as he was trying to ignore them.
For Mr Pence’s supporters, “I think the hard-line wing of the United States thinks he did a fine job,” said David Kang, director of the Korean Studies Institute at the University of Southern California.
And while Mr Moon could not miss the chance to “lower the temperature in the room” by engaging with Kim during her visit for the Olympics, her public relations blitz could subject the South Korean president to criticism that “he fell for a charm offensive”, Mr Kang said.
There was a rally on Sunday in central Seoul, where a few hundred anti-North Korea demonstrators waving South Korean and US flags gathered and shouted slogans denouncing Kim Jong-un.
Protester Yang Sun-woo, 55, said, “I’m afraid a lot of Koreans have been fooled by Kim Yo-jong’s visit.”
“It’s very unfortunate that the Pyeongchang Olympics are becoming the Pyongyang Olympics when South and North Korea are still at odds with each other over ideologies,” added Mr Yang, who carried a foam head depicting a bloodied face of the North Korean leader.