US vice-president to use own presence at Games to remind world ‘everything the North Koreans do at the Olympics is a charade’
Vice-president Mike Pence will stop North Korea “hijacking” the Winter Olympics, an aide said on Sunday, by using his own presence at the Games to remind the world “everything the North Koreans do at the Olympics is a charade to cover up the fact that they are the most tyrannical and oppressive regime on the planet”.
Such rhetoric stands at odds with recent diplomatic exchanges between North and South Korea. The two countries will march under one flag at the Games, which begin in Pyeongchang on Friday. They will also field a joint women’s ice hockey team.
Diplomacy around the Games has been hailed as a success, at odds with confrontational and inflammatory rhetoric from the White House and Pyongyang since Donald Trump became president last year.
Kim Jong-un’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon deliverable to US soil has fuelled tension, as have Trump’s aggressive speeches and tweets on the subject. Last month, a false alarm of an incoming ballistic missile spread panic in Hawaii.
Trump, who has repeatedly threatened military action, criticised North Korea in his State of the Union speech to Congress this week, at which a North Korean defector was a praised guest.
