PYEONGCHANG, South Korea—Daniel Olomae Ole Sapit, a member of Kenya’s semi-nomadic Maasai tribe, is now well aware that Pyeongchang is not in North Korea.

Last fall, Mr. Sapit, a 42-year-old representative for indigenous cow herders in his native Kenya, was registered to attend a United Nations conference on biodiversity in Pyeongchang, a ski resort just south of the heavily fortified border that separates the authoritarian North from the capitalist South.

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