Ivanka Trump, the White House official and daughter of President Trump, will be leading the U.S delegation to the closing ceremonies of the Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. According to senior administration officials, Ivanka will leave for Seoul on Thursday on a commercial flight, arriving in the South Korean capital on Friday. There, she will meet and dine with President Moon Jae-in.
Joining Ivanka on the trip will be Idaho senator Jim Risch, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee; Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary; General Benson Brooks, the commander of the United States Forces Korea; Mark Knapper, the top U.S. diplomat at the American Embassy in South Korea; and Sgt. Shauna Rohbock, a national guardswoman who is a former Olympic bobsledder. The delegation will attend a so-far undetermined number of athletic competitions in Pyeongchang, as well as the closing ceremonies on Sunday.
A senior administration official said there are no plans for anyone from the U.S. delegation to meet with a member of the North Korean government. The Washington Post reported this week that Vice President Mike Pence, who led the American delegation to the opening ceremonies, had agreed to a “secret meeting” with Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and an official in the government, and Kim Yong-nam, another top official. “[T]he North Koreans pulled out of the scheduled meeting, according to Pence’s office,” reported the Post.
The administration also knocked down reports in South Korean media that Ivanka would meet with defectors from North Korea, with a senior official calling them “incorrect.”
