NKorea’s nuclear envoy seeks to visit US
A top North Korean nuclear envoy wants to visit the United States for rare talks next month, news reports said Saturday, amid a push by diplomats to revive negotiations on ending Pyongyang's nuclear program. Officials in Washington said no such trip was planned.
North Korea is strongly pushing for Kim Kye Gwan's trip to the United States in March, but the U.S. has not authorized a visa for him, South Korea's Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported, citing unidentified diplomatic sources.
Kim told his Chinese counterpart during this week's meetings in Beijing he hopes to hold a bilateral meeting with the U.S. in March, Seoul's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported, also citing unnamed diplomats.
Kim left for Pyongyang Saturday after concluding a five-day trip to China, Yonhap news agency reported from Beijing.
"Both sides had an in-depth discussion on the issue of boosting the (North Korea)-China relations and matters of speeding up the denuclearization of the peninsula," the North's Foreign Ministry said in comments carried by its official Korean Central News Agency.
U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Friday there were no plans for a visit by Kim, and no current U.S. discussions with North Korea about such a trip.
Crowley said U.S. officials haven't ruled out future meetings with the North Koreans, but "we believe firmly that the next meeting that U.S. representatives and others should have with North Korea is through a formal six-party meeting."
A bilateral meeting between the North Korean envoy and U.S. officials would be a strong sign that the push to get the disarmament talks back on track was gaining traction. It would also confirm a warming in relations between the U.S. and North Korea, wartime rivals that do not have diplomatic relations.
North Korea, believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least half a dozen atomic bombs, walked away from disarmament-for-aid negotiations last year during a standoff over its nuclear and missile programs.
However, after tightened sanctions and financial isolation, the impoverished nation has reached out to Washington, Seoul and Beijing in recent months.
N.Korea accuses S.Korea of plot amid push for nuclear talks
Pyongyang accused Seoul on Monday of plotting to topple its regime as relations again soured, while a top Chinese official met North Korea's leader to bring the country back to nuclear disarmament talks.
In another blow for inter-Korean ties, the two sides failed to agree on restarting a tourism project.
A statement from North Korean security ministries said Seoul's plots against the country had "recently gone beyond the danger line" and Pyongyang had a secret strike force for protection.
The communist North often claims that Seoul's conservative government is plotting against it.
"We have world-level ultra-modern striking force and means for protecting security which have neither yet been mentioned nor opened to the public in total," the ministries said in a statement on official media.
The North criticised efforts by the South's military to defend the disputed Yellow Sea border -- where the North fired artillery salvoes late last month -- and its "reckless" operations to destabilise the North.
It complained about "the daily escalating" scattering of propaganda leaflets by balloon, which were now penetrating deep into the country from border areas.
Despite the tough talk, the North has been pushing to revive business projects with the South since it was hit by tougher sanctions for its missile launches and nuclear test last year.
The two sides held talks Monday about a possible resumption of tours which previously earned the cash-strapped state tens of millions of dollars a year.
Seoul suspended the trips after soldiers in July 2008 shot dead a Seoul housewife who strayed into an off-limits military zone at the Mount Kumgang resort in the North.
South Korea's unification ministry demands safety guarantees before it restarts them.
But spokesman Chun Hae-Sung said Monday's meeting in the North Korean border town of Kaesong ended "without any significant agreement" after Pyongyang rejected Seoul's terms.
Chun said South Korea demanded that its officials conduct an on-site probe into the shooting but "the North Korean side said it has already conducted sufficient investigations into the incident".
The South also demanded the North guarantee the safety of future tourists. The North said such steps were taken when Kim Jong-Il met last August with a South Korean businesswoman whose company runs the tours.
About 1.9 million visitors, mainly South Koreans, have visited the Seoul-funded Kumgang resort since it opened in 1998. Over a decade the tours earned the North a total of 487 million dollars.
The head of the Chinese Communist Party's international department, Wang Jiarui, meanwhile met North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said.
Wang also met communist party official Choe Thae-Bok to reaffirm the countries' friendship and exchange views "on other issues of common concern," Beijing's Xinhua news agency said.
The meetings came one day before Lynn Pascoe, top political adviser to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, was due in Pyongyang for a four-day visit.
China hosts the six-party nuclear talks which its ally North Korea quit last April, a month before staging a second nuclear test.
As conditions for returning to the nuclear forum, the North wants a US agreement to hold formal peace talks and a lifting of UN sanctions.
In an apparent conciliatory gesture to Washington, Pyongyang on Saturday freed a US missionary who had crossed the border last December 25 on a lone campaign to publicise rights abuses.
Seoul newspaper says US citizen seeks aslum in N.Korea
A second US citizen who was detained by North Korea for crossing the border has sought political asylum in the communist state, a South Korean newspaper said Saturday.
The report by the conservative Dong-A Ilbo daily could not be confirmed independently.
Dong-A Ilbo, quoting an unidentified source, said the American was a 28-year-old man.
He crossed the border near the city of Tumen in northeast China into North Korea's Onsong County on Monday, the daily said.
"I came here because I did not want to serve as a cannon fodder in the capitalist military. I want to serve in the North Korean army," the American was quoted as telling North Koreans, according to the daily.
However his identity including his name and occupation remained unknown, the paper said.
The United States said Friday it had been formally told by the North that it was holding a second US citizen and that authorities were investigating to find out the person's identity.
North Korea, which has no diplomatic relations with Washington, informed the United States through its mission to the United Nations in New York, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters.
But the United States was still unaware of the person's name or the circumstances in which he or she entered North Korea, he said.
The United States has asked Sweden, which handles US interests in Pyongyang, to look into the case, he said.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency earlier said in a succinct dispatch that authorities had detained an American on Monday for crossing the border and that he was now under investigation.
Crowley said that the United States understood that it was a fresh case and that the report was not referring to Robert Park, another American held in North Korea.
Park, a Christian activist, crossed the border on Christmas Day in an effort to draw attention to human rights concerns in the one-party state.
North Korea is calling for a peace treaty with the United States to end the Korean War armistice and enter diplomatic relations.
But the United States says the North must return to six-party talks first to discuss the removal of its nuclear weapons and programmes.
