While Mr. Pence met with North Korean defectors and condemned Mr. Kim for human rights abuses, officials said Ms. Trump would keep her focus on reaffirming the bonds between the United States and South Korea and cheering on American athletes. “Their talent, drive, grit and spirit embodies American excellence,” she said in a statement on Wednesday.
On Friday evening, Ms. Trump, 36, is scheduled to have dinner with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, who tried desperately to broker a meeting between Mr. Pence and the North Korean delegation. There are no plans for Ms. Trump to meet with anyone from North Korea during her three-day visit, though an official declined to rule out the possibility.
Ms. Trump will travel with the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Allison Hooker, a National Security Council official who specializes in Korean affairs, among others. The council has briefed Ms. Trump about the political situation on the Korean Peninsula, according to officials.
Administration officials said she was fully prepared to discuss Mr. Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy with Mr. Moon, the South Korean news media or with North Korean officials, should she run into any.
Simply by virtue of her age and background, Ms. Trump will project a more accessible image than Mr. Pence, 58. He arrived with a directive from Mr. Trump to blunt the propaganda campaign of North Korea, which has used the Olympics as a kind of olive branch to the South.
While the president authorized Mr. Pence to meet with the North Koreans, he insisted that any meeting be held privately, away from cameras, and that Mr. Pence deliver the same harsh message in private that he delivered in public.
Mr. Pence reinforced his hard-line image by remaining seated during the opening ceremony when the audience stood for the unified Korean Olympic team. He ignored Ms. Kim and another top North Korean official, Kim Yong-nam, who were seated behind him in Mr. Moon’s box.
American officials said they believed these gestures — on top of Mr. Pence’s threat of new sanctions against the North, which Mr. Pence delivered in Japan, on his way to South Korea — caused the North Koreans to rethink the meeting with the vice president.
Administration officials said they were pleased with Mr. Pence’s unyielding approach. Some noted that the South Koreans did not help the atmosphere by thrusting Mr. Pence into situations for which he was not prepared — like seating him so close to Ms. Kim at the opening ceremony.
Still, his reviews in South Korea were poor, and the canceled meeting was a particular disappointment to Mr. Moon, whose strategy of engaging North Korea is putting him increasingly at odds with the White House, and its maximum pressure campaign.
To the extent that North Korea and the United States are engaged in a contest for the affections of the South Korean president, some analysts felt Mr. Pence’s trip was a missed opportunity.
“I don’t think the Pence trip was a failure, but it reaffirmed how tough and inflexible the U.S. position is,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a former Asia adviser to President Barack Obama. “It’s nice if you can put a velvet glove over the iron fist.”
While Mr. Medeiros played down the larger implications of Ms. Trump’s visit, he said she was likely to be a hit with the South Korean public. “I can see her resonating with South Koreans,” he said.
The decision to send Ms. Trump grew out of a conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Moon, officials said, in which the South Korean leader pleaded with the president to send high-level delegations to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games in Pyeongchang.
Mr. Trump turned down Mr. Moon’s invitation to go himself, since he had been in South Korea in November. But he agreed to consider sending a family member, like the first lady, Melania Trump, or his daughter Ivanka. Last month, officials said, the president settled on his daughter, who is also his senior adviser.
In some ways, Ms. Trump is a natural fit to attend the Winter Games. She is an avid skier, a sport she picked up from her mother, Ivana, who skied competitively for what was then Czechoslovakia. Ms. Trump, friends say, has watched the Olympics with her daughter, Arabella, taking particular interest in the super-G event.
During the transition, Ms. Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, became involved in negotiations between the International Olympic Committee and Los Angeles over that city’s bid to host the Games in 2028.
In addition to Ms. Trump and Ms. Sanders, the American delegation will include Senator James E. Risch, a Republican from Idaho who is in line to become the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, if Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee sticks to his decision to retire.
It will also include Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the commander of United States Forces Korea, and Shauna Rohbock, an Olympic medalist in bobsledding who serves in the National Guard.
Ms. Trump had planned to visit South Korea in November during her father’s tour of Asia and to participate in an event focused on female entrepreneurs. But she stayed home to lobby for an expansion of the child tax credit in the Republican tax bill.
Now, she will be the last prominent American visitor to Pyeongchang before the Games end, and South Korea embarks on an uncertain future with the North and its ally, the United States.