The first daughter’s prominence in Japan and South Korea appeared to be by design — a sign of her influence with President Trump and the current absence of influential opponents within the administration.

It’s not clear, however, to what end.

Ivanka Trump shuttered her clothing business after joining the administration, although not right away, and has largely stepped away from her old life as an entrepreneur and social mainstay in New York. She and her husband, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, let it be known last year that they would remain in Washington and in the White House indefinitely.

Her ambitions are unknown — she demurs on any desire for public office. Over time, her work on women’s issues and entre­pre­neur­ship has increasingly resembled that of a State Department envoy. She made a lengthy trip to India in November 2017, and several others since, sometimes with her father and sometimes on her own. On a solo Africa trip in April, Trump said she would campaign for women’s right to own and inherit land in Africa and promote a $50 million U.S. development project in Ethiopia.

The gray area she occupies — family, employee, envoy, advocate — frequently overlaps with the work of career diplomats. But her unfamiliarity with some elements of diplomacy were on display on this trip, including when she pronounced India a “critical ally.” It is a partner in many areas, but U.S. diplomats avoid the higher terminology of ally.

Mostly, her prominence on a major foreign trip sends a message about who other countries should listen to or court, said Christopher R. Hill, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and other nations.

“It looks to the rest of the world like we have a kind of a constitutional monarchy,” said Hill, who oversaw nuclear talks with North Korea at the close of the George W. Bush administration.

“It’s increasingly problematic in terms of our credibility,” Hill said. “It says to our allies, to everyone we do business with, that the only people who matter are Trump and his family members.”

Ivanka Trump had front-row seats at nearly every televised session in Japan and for President Trump’s visit to South Korea, where the trip to the demilitarized zone was the main event. She and Kushner were among the small U.S. delegation at the border, which included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo but not White House national security adviser John Bolton, a longtime skeptic of diplomacy with North Korea. Bolton instead had left to fly to Mongolia.

Ivanka Trump worked the room at a meeting of South Korean business leaders on Saturday, with cameras catching the smiling interactions. Pompeo did not attend. She remained in the front row at Trump’s news conference in Seoul, nodding in agreement as the president spoke, after Pompeo ducked out minutes into the event.

Along the way were opportunities for the kind of “branding” Ivanka Trump espouses as a tool for empowering women — a main theme of her work as presidential adviser, some of it captured on her Instagram account.

“She’s going to steal the show,” Trump said, grinning.

As Pompeo fell in beside Ivanka Trump and the two walked toward him, President Trump quipped, “What a beautiful couple,” and the audience howled. “Mike! Beauty and the beast,” Trump went on, as he also acknowledged Harry Harris, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

Pompeo appeared to gesture to Ivanka Trump to go first, but she stepped aside and signaled for him to speak. After Pompeo briefly thanked the troops, there was a roar as Ivanka Trump stepped forward. President Trump and Pompeo flanked her, grinning, as she also thanked the troops and their spouses and families.

“They made the trip with me, and we spent a lot of time, a lot of time,” the president said.

Ivanka Trump’s presence at the DMZ is particularly troubling, said Jenny Town, a North Korea specialist at the Stimson Center and editor of 38 North, a publication focused on North Korea.

“It was not appropriate for Trump to bring his kids to this meeting,” Town said. “But it was a weird mix of people on the U.S. side to begin with. What’s notable, however, is who wasn’t there: Bolton.”

Trump has sidelined or fired some professional national security advisers and undercut others, including at times Pompeo and Bolton. He has never publicly criticized or contradicted Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner, although he has jokingly teased Kushner at times.

Pompeo spoke to reporters after the DMZ visit and outlined some of the bureaucratic next steps with North Korea.

Pompeo was asked whether his presence at the DMZ was a signal to North Korea, which has complained about him and reportedly sought to go around him with Trump. Pompeo, who enjoys a close relationship with Trump, did not mention Ivanka Trump in his answer, though her presence Sunday had served to underscore the personal nature of Trump’s direct diplomacy with Kim.

“So far as I know, President Trump has always had me in charge” of negotiations, Pompeo said.

John Hudson in Washington, Simon Denyer in Seoul, Seung Min Kim in Panmunjon, Korea, and Carol Morello in Anchorage contributed to this report.