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US Has ‘No Plans’ to Meet With North Korean Officials at Olympics

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States has no plans to meet with North Korean officials during or after the Winter Olympic Games that begin in Pyeongchang, South Korea this week, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a briefing on Tuesday.
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"[There are] no plans to meet with North Korean officials during or after the Olympics," Nauert said. "There is no shift in US policy regarding this."

Earlier, however, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did not rule out a possible meeting between Vice President Mike Pence and North Korean representatives during his upcoming trip to South Korea.

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"With respect to Vice President’s trip to the Olympics and whether or not there would be an opportunity for him to have a meeting with North Korea, I think we’ll just see, we’ll see what happens," Tillerson said in a joint press conference with Peruvian Foreign Minister Cayetana Aljovin in Lima, Peru on Monday.

Recently, tensions between North and South Koreas have broken somewhat in anticipation of 2018 Winter Olympic games in Pyeongchang. The nations even agreed to march under the same flag during the games.

Last week, US special representative to North Korea Joseph Yun reported that the US was far from using military force on the Korean Peninsula.

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