US Vice President Mike Pence briefly encountered North Korea's ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong-nam, Friday at a reception dinner hosted by South Korean President Moon Jae-in ahead of the opening of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
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(Yonhap) |
The two, however, apparently tried to avoid directly facing each other, with Pence leaving the venue only after a five-minute stay, according to pool reports.
Pence was originally scheduled to sit at the head table with the South Korean host and North Korea's chief delegate to the Winter Games.
The reception was held at a hotel in Yongpyeong, just east of the host city of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games. It was attended by some 200 people, including more than two dozen global leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the presidents of Estonia and Germany.
Pence's early departure apparently reflected the US' suspicions toward the recent rapprochement between the two Koreas.
North Korea agreed to take part in the Winter Olympic Games after three rounds of inter-Korean dialogue last month that marked the first of their kind in more than two years.
In a meeting with the South Korean president on Thursday, the US vice president said his country will continue to put maximum pressure on the North until the reclusive state comes to the dialogue table to discuss its "permanent" and "irreversible" denuclearization.
Pence arrived here Thursday while Kim and other North Korean delegates, including North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's younger sister Yo-jong, arrived earlier in the day.
Kim and the North Korean leader's sister are scheduled to hold a meeting with Moon on Saturday.
At the Olympic reception, the North Korean official was still joined by several other global leaders, including Abe and the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, and his wife, according to Seoul's presidential office Cheong Wa Dae.
On Thursday, North Korea said its official delegation to the PyeongChang Olympics had no intention of meetings its US counterpart.
"We have never begged for dialogue with the US and will be the same in the future," Cho Yong-sam, a senior official at the North's foreign ministry, was quoted as saying by the communist state's official Korean Central News Agency. (Yonhap)
