The U.S. envoy on North Korean affairs, Stephen Bosworth, and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan met in New York on July 28 and 29. The meeting was the first U.S.-North Korea talks in a year and seven months. It followed a July 22 Bali meeting between North and South Korean nuclear negotiators, the first such meeting in two years and seven months.
Mr. Bosworth and Mr. Kim said that their talks were very constructive and agreed to hold further dialogue. But the talks apparently did not produce concrete results. It is also unclear whether the North will return to the six-party talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which virtually broke off in April 2009.
One of the issues taken up in the U.S.-North Korea talks was the uranium enrichment by the North, which surfaced in November 2010. Mr. Kim hinted that the North rejected the U.S. demand for stopping the enrichment, saying that it is a peaceful activity for the sake of electricity generation.