What happens if a North Korean athlete defects? Disaster

In the meantime, Moon is said to be considering the Korean invitation a summit meeting later this year.

Speaking on his way home from the Winter Olympics in South Korea, Mr Pence said there was “no daylight” between the two allies on the issue.

“(President Moon) said a lot of nice things”, said goalie Shin So-jung after the game.

US Vice-President Mike Pence has said his country and South Korea are in complete agreement on the need to maintain pressure on North Korea.

Pence and Moon took two very different diplomatic approaches to the North Korean delegation’s attendance at the games in Pyeongchang.

The U.S. -led worldwide community has been tightening the screws on North Korea with sanctions created to punish its economy and rein in its efforts to expand its nuclear weapons and missile program, which now includes developmental long-range missiles targeting the U.S. mainland.

But it could threaten to sow division between Moon, who has long argued for engagement with the nuclear-armed North to bring it to the negotiating table, and US President Donald Trump, who past year traded personal insults and threats of war with Kim.

A senior US official said Pence and Moon, while watching speed skating together on Saturday night, discussed intensifying sanctions.

Officials in the Trump administration have previously said a North Korean commitment to denuclearization up front was necessary to kick start talks.

Over the weekend, Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of leader Kim Jong Un visited Seoul and met with President Moon Jae-in, a historic first by any member of the ruling Kim family and the most significant diplomatic development in the Kim Jong Un era.

The regime appears keen to allow such displays of sportsmanship and unity – whether it will allow its public to view any North Korea team in defeat is another matter.

South Korea and the United States had agreed to postpone their annual spring military exercises until after the Olympics, partly to encourage North Korea to participate – and to not act as a spoiler.

North and South Korea remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty. Athletes from North and South paraded together during the ceremony in the same white parkas, marching under a single “unification flag” depicting an undivided peninsula to the tune of their shared traditional folk song “Arirang” instead of their respective anthems.

Moon and Kim Yo Jong will have another opportunity to talk when they attend the second and final performance by a visiting North Korean orchestra on Sunday evening in Seoul, a Blue House official said.

The report included an unusually casual picture of Mr Kim flanked by his sister and the North’s ceremonial head of state Kim Yong-nam, both holding on to him.

The DPRK art group’s last visit to South Korea can date back to August 2002, when a delegation of the DPRK political, religious, academic and art representatives came for joint celebrations to mark the Liberation Day, commemorating the overthrow of the Japanese colonial rule on the peninsula on Aug. 15, 1945.