Ivanka Trump Arrives in South Korea for Games and Diplomacy

SEOUL, South Korea — President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, arrived in South Korea on Friday, starting a highly anticipated trip two weeks after North Korea’s leader sent his sister here on a mission seen as an attempt to undermine Seoul’s alliance with Washington.

Ivanka Trump, who holds the title of senior White House adviser, plans to have dinner with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, the capital. She will then lead a U.S. delegation to Pyeongchang, east of Seoul, where the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics will be held Sunday.

White House officials said she would be cheering on U.S. athletes and helping to cement Washington’s alliance with South Korea. She does not intend to meet with a North Korean delegation that will attend the closing ceremony, they said. But her presence at the event with the North Koreans is bound to generate intense interest.

Her arrival was covered live on South Korean television. She emerged from Incheon International Airport to face a bank of television cameras.

Her arrival comes two weeks after the surprise visit by Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, created something of a sensation in South Korea, overshadowing Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to the Olympics at the same time. Kim Yo Jong met with Moon and delivered a surprise offer: her brother’s invitation to visit the North for a summit meeting.

Despite South Korean hopes that Kim Yo Jong and Pence would use the games as an opportunity for their own diplomacy, the two ignored each other in Moon’s box at the opening ceremony, where they sat just feet apart. South Korean officials arranged a later meeting between the two, U.S. officials said, but the North Koreans pulled out at the last minute.

With Kim Yo Jong having seized the media spotlight as the first immediate member of the North’s ruling family to set foot in South Korea, Ivanka Trump’s visit is expected to restore some luster to the U.S. side of the unspoken propaganda contest.

Some in the local media have already been touting similarities between the women, calling Kim Yo Jong “North Korea’s Ivanka” because of the influence the two are purported to have over the heads of state in their respective families.

South Korean officials are intent on not seeing a repeat of the standoff between Kim and Pence at the opening ceremony, while playing down speculation about an encounter between Trump and North Korean officials.

One obstacle to such a meeting is that the North Korean delegation will be headed by Kim Yong Chol, a former spy chief who is widely blamed in the South for the 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship and some of the North’s alleged hacking attacks against the South and the United States. He has been on a U.S. sanctions list since 2010.

U.S. officials said that Trump would not meet with any North Korean defectors during her visit, as Pence did in an attempt to draw attention to the North Korean government’s many human rights abuses.