Are US and North Korean officials meeting at the Olympics? Some clues suggest so.

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — North Korea sent one of its top officials dealing with American affairs to South Korea on Sunday, renewing speculation that a meeting between representatives from Pyongyang and Washington could take place on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics.

As with the opening ceremony, both the United States and North Korea have sent high-level delegations to the closing of the games. The U.S. delegation is led by Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser, while the North Korean group is headed by Kim Yong Chol, a former spy chief accused of involvement in 2010 attacks that killed 50 South Koreans.

After it emerged last week that Vice President Pence had planned to meet Kim Jong Un’s younger sister on the sidelines of the Olympic opening ceremony, only for the plan to fall through at the last moment, analysts have been speculating about the possibility of a meeting at the closing.

The White House has said that Trump has no plans to meet with any North Koreans during her visit, and she has reiterated the administration’s line about putting “maximum pressure” on the Kim regime.

But the White House has not ruled out the prospect of any American official meeting with a representative of the North Korean regime.

Accompanying Trump on the trip — but left off the official White House notice — is Allison Hooker, the Korea director on the National Security Council who previously worked on Korea in the State Department’s bureau of intelligence and research.

Hooker accompanied James R. Clapper Jr., then director of national intelligence, to Pyongyang in 2014 to secure the release of two Americans being detained by the North Korean regime. They met with Kim Yong Chol, who was head of the North’s military intelligence service at the time and is now vice chairman of a key communist party committee dealing with inter-Korea relations.

[Ivanka Trump arrives in South Korea, but Seoul says no meeting with North planned]

When Kim Yong Chol crossed into South Korea Sunday, he was accompanied by a surprising figure: Choe Kang Il, deputy director of the American affairs division in North Korea’s foreign ministry.

Choe has taken part in talks with former American officials in recent years, including at a security-related forum in Switzerland last September. His boss in the American affairs division is thought to have a direct line to Kim Jong Un.

Now both Hooker and Choe, bureaucrats on a similar level and dealing with similar issues, are in South Korea at the same time — raising the possibility of a meeting. 

“There is no reason for Allison Hooker to come, nor is there is there any reason for Choe Kang Il to be here,” said John Delury, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul. “They’re both superfluous to the Olympic ceremonies and to inter-Korean relations.”

They would be appropriate officials to meet and have a “preliminary discussion” — not a negotiation, but a precursor to substantive talks, Delury said. “They could and they should do this,” he said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is traveling in South Korea with Trump and Hooker, said no meetings were scheduled.

Although recent efforts at convincing North Korea to relinquish its nuclear weapons have involved multilateral talks, the problem is between Pyongyang and Washington.

North Korea’s antagonism toward the outside world is rooted in its hatred of the United States, which all but destroyed the country with sustained bombing during the Korean War. That conflict ended in 1953 with an armistice — signed for the southern side by the United States, not South Korea. 

To this day, North Korea says that it needs nuclear weapons to fend off the United States and insists that any normalization will require a peace treaty with the United States, as the signatory to the armistice, not with South Korea.

Choe was defiant when he led a North Korean delegation to a Swiss-organized meeting last September. The U.S. government did not send any officials to the meeting, but two regular American interlocutors with North Koreans — former State Department official Evans Revere and Pacific Forum president Ralph Cossa — attended.

Choe delivered a strong message to the meeting: that North Korea’s nuclear weapons were not up for discussion.

[Trump administration unveils sanctions aimed at starving North Korea of resources]

The arrival of the North Korean delegation was controversial in South Korea for different reasons.

Kim Yong Chol is widely accused of masterminding two deadly attacks in 2010: a torpedo attack on the Cheonan naval corvette, which killed 46 South Korean sailors, and the shelling of an island, which killed four.

He has since been blacklisted by both the United States and South Korea for suspected involvement in the nuclear program. South Korea waived its sanctions to allow him to attend the closing ceremony.

But throngs of conservatives, including lawmakers from the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, staged a sit-in overnight on Saturday at the border crossing in the Demilitarized Zone where the North Korean delegation was scheduled to cross into the South.

They were protesting against the progressive government's decision to allow Kim Yong Chol into the South, calling him a “murderer” and vowing to act as a “human shield” to stop him.

But their efforts were stymied: The delegation crossed Sunday morning using a military road.

 Protests continued near the Olympic closing ceremony site in PyeongChang, with South Koreans holding up North Korean flags and pictures of leader Kim Jong Un, both with red crosses across them.

A handful of protesters in Seoul held up banners showing President Trump's face and the words: Bomb North Korea.

[North Korea’s Kim Jong Un invites South Korea’s president to Pyongyang]

The conservative Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s biggest newspaper, said the progressive government was “Spitting on Cheonan victims' graves” by allowing Kim Yong Chol into the country.

“Many South Koreans already feel uncomfortable with North Korea taking center stage at the Winter Olympics” the paper wrote in an editorial. “And now Seoul is going to roll out the red carpet for a butcher at the closing ceremony of an event celebrating sports and peace. Has the government not bent international sanctions far enough to accommodate North Korea?”

But analysts pointed out that conservatives had not protested when Kim Yong Chol came to South Korea for the Asian Games in 2014 — when conservative president Park Geun-hye was in power.

 The North Korean delegation is due to stay until Tuesday, while Ivanka Trump will leave Monday.

 Moon Jae-in’s pro-engagement government in South Korea has been trying to use the Olympics as a way to ease tensions between North Korea and the outside world.

When leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, came for the opening ceremony earlier this month, she brought an invitation for Moon to visit Pyongyang. The South Korean leader said he would work to create the “right conditions” for the visit.

Vice President Pence actively avoided Kim Yo Jong during the opening ceremony, even though they were sitting just feet apart. But the White House revealed afterward that they had a plan to meet on the day after the opening, Feb. 10, but the North Koreans backed out. 

Read more:

South Korea’s ‘Garlic Girls’ are Olympic curling heroes, even after losing out on gold

While Korean tensions ease, 3 Americans remain ‘prisoners of war’ in the North 

The leaders of both Koreas feel like they won gold medals this week

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