At Olympics, Ivanka targets North Korea
Washington urged to use current positive mood in seeking denuclearisation
US President Donald Trump’s daughter toured the 2018 Winter Olympics yesterday, the morning after telling South Korea’s president that she will use her visit to the Pyeongchang Games to advocate maximum pressure on North Korea to halt its nuclear programme.
Ivanka Trump, who is one of her father’s close advisers, is leading the US delegation at this weekend’s closing ceremony for the Pyeongchang Games. Under cloudy skies, she watched her first event yesterday morning — Big Air snowboarding.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in highlighted to Trump how the Olympics have served as a vehicle for dialogue between the two Koreas, and said the US and South Korea should make use of the current mood of rapprochement between the Koreas in seeking denuclearisation.
At a closed-door meeting before a banquet on Friday night at the presidential compound, South Korea said yesterday new US sanctions on North Korea will bolster international community compliance with UN resolutions aimed at pressing the isolated state to give up its development of nuclear weapons.
“New US sanctions will alert those who are illegally trading with North Korea and therefore bolster the international community to carry out resolutions from the UN Security Council,” the South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement.
The ministry reaffirmed that South Korea and the United States would work closely to achieve North Korea’s denuclearisation peacefully. Moon told Trump that talks on denuclearisation and the interKorean dialogue must move forward side by side, Moon’s press secretary, Yoon Young-chan, told reporters.
Maximum pressure
Trump responded by pushing for joint efforts by the US and South Korea to apply maximum pressure on North Korea, Yoon said.
The differences in how the US and South Korea hope to achieve denuclearisation were also apparent during the banquet. In her remarks, Trump said she was in South Korea to celebrate the Olympics and to reaffirm the US commitment to a “maximum pressure campaign to ensure that the Korean Peninsula is denuclearised.”
On Friday, the Trump administration announced sanctions on more than 50 vessels, shipping companies and trade businesses to turn up the pressure on North Korea.
US officials said that Trump had discussed the action with Moon ahead of the announcement in Washington.
In Pyeongchang yesterday morning, Ivanka Trump watched snowboarders go on runs at the Big Air jump and saw American snowboarder Kyle Mack take a silver medal.
A smiling Trump, wearing a Team USA hat and red snowsuit, chatted with members of her delegation and South Korea first lady Kim Jung-suk. Also with her was IOC board member and 1998 hockey gold medallist Angela Ruggiero.
After the event ended, Trump spoke with some of the South Korean athletes who were guests of the delegation and posed for selfies.
Meeting unlikely
A high-level North Korean delegation will also attend Sunday’s Olympic closing ceremony, but the South Korean government said it’s unlikely that Ivanka Trump will meet the North Koreans. Vice-President Mike Pence, who attended the Olympics’ opening ceremony, sat awkwardly in a VIP box with the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un behind him. The two had no apparent contact.
Moon hoped to make the Olympics an avenue for peace on the divided Korean Peninsula.
“North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympic Games has served as an opportunity for us to engage in active discussions between the two Koreas and this has led to lowering of tensions on the peninsula and an improvement in inter-Korean relations,” Moon said.