Plans for the first contact between North Korea and the United States after Donald Trump took office have reportedly been cancelled after the US state department denied a visa for the top envoy from Pyongyang.
The talks, between senior North Korean foreign ministry envoy Choe Son Hui and former US officials, were scheduled to take place on 1 and 2 March in New York but were called off after Choe was denied a visa, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
It was not clear what led the state department to deny the visa but North Korea’s test-firing of a ballistic missile on 12 February and the murder of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half brother in Malaysia may have played a role, the report said.
South Korean and US officials have said they believe North Korean agents assassinated Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half brother of Kim Jong-un, on 13 February.
A US state department official denied so-called track two discussions had been scheduled.
“The US government had no plans to engage in track 2 talks in New York,” the official said, declining comment on individual visa cases.
A South Korean foreign ministry official declined to comment on the report of the cancelled meeting in New York, saying the reported plan did not involve its government.
The meeting in New York would have been the first time a senior North Korean envoy would visit the United States since 2011 and the first contact between US and North Korean representatives since Trump took office.
Choe, director general for North American affairs at the North’s foreign ministry, has previously met former US officials and academics, the last time in November in Geneva for informal discussions.
Trump said in a Reuters interview on Thursday that he was concerned about North Korea’s ballistic missile tests and called it “a very dangerous situation”. Trump did not ruling out meeting Kim at some point in the future under certain circumstances but suggested it might be too late.
