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US Vice President Mike Pence speaks at a political fundraiser at the Bethel Park Community Center in Pennsylvania on Feb. 2. (AFP)

Day after day, the Trump administration has been using Vice President Mike Pence’s attendance at the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics to underscore North Korea’s human rights abuses and to signal that it will put more sanctions and pressure on the North. This is expected to create significant difficulties for the South Korean government under President Moon Jae-in, which is working to create a virtuous cycle in which inter-Korean dialogue leads to US-North Korea dialogue during the Pyeongchang Olympics.

Pence’s itinerary in South Korea, which is gradually coming to light, is largely focused on the North Korean human rights issue and on the North’s “bellicosity.” The Voice of America reported on Feb. 6 that Pence will be meeting with defectors in Seoul before he attends the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Olympics on Feb. 9. Pence’s meeting with the defectors is reportedly nearly finalized.

Before leaving from the US on Feb. 5, Pence posted the following tweet to his Twitter account: “Honored that Fred Warmbier, father of Otto Warmbier, will join us at @pyeongchang2018 in S Korea. He & his wife remind the world of the atrocities happening in N Korea.” Otto Warmbier was an American university student who died after being released from detention in the North. Pence’s remarks imply that the US government will attempt to put the spotlight on North Korea’s human rights record while the world is focused on the Pyeongchang Olympics as a way of putting pressure on North Korea.

In addition to this, Pence is reportedly planning to visit a memorial to the ROKS Cheonan, a South Korean naval vessel that was sunk in 2010, at the Pyeongtaek Naval Facility during his visit to South Korea. It is also likely that he will send a message about pressuring North Korea through economic and diplomatic sanctions after his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Feb. 7.

During a telephone briefing on Feb. 5, a White House official said that Pence would use every opportunity to underscore the reality of what is happening in North Korea regardless of any attempts by the North Korean regime to hijack the media for its own propaganda purposes during the Olympics. During Pence’s return flight from a trip to the Middle East on Jan. 23, a high-ranking official working for Pence said that previous vice presidents had attended the Olympics merely to “cut the ribbon” but “we wouldn’t be making this trip if that’s what it was about.”

In light of this stance, it is widely assumed that there is not likely to be a significant meeting between Pence and Kim Yong-nam, president of the Presidium of the North Korean Supreme People's Assembly, around the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Tillerson did not write off the possibility of such a meeting when asked about it on Feb. 5: “Whether there would be an opportunity for any kind of a meeting with North Korea, I think we’ll just see… We’ll have to see what happens.” Even so, the White House has reportedly taken quite a hard line on this issue.

This also suggests that it will not be easy to coordinate the South Korean and American messages during Pence’s visit to South Korea or for Moon to convince Pence of his approach during their meeting. But as the US policy toward North Korea still lacks specificity, there is speculation that room for maneuver continues to exist.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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