LET DOWN

North Korea Says Talks With U.S. Broke Down ‘Without Any Outcome’

A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. had a “good discussion” with North Korean counterparts.

Nuclear diplomacy talks between the United States and North Korea are done for the time being, U.S. and North Korean officials said Saturday. However, each country had a different perspective on how the discussions went. “The break-up of the negotiation without any outcome is totally due to the fact that the U.S. would not give up their old viewpoint and attitude,” North Korea’s top negotiator Kim Myong Gil said. The U.S. State department responded to Kim’s comments in a statement. “The early comments from the DPRK [North Korean] delegation do not reflect the content or the spirit of today's 8.5-hour discussion,” spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus wrote. “The US brought creative ideas and had good discussions with its DPRK counterparts.”

Delegations from the United States and North Korea met in a secluded enclave near Stockholm, Sweden, in an attempt to restart negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear weapon program. Reuters reports that U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun and North Korea’s Kim Myong Gil arrived by separate motorcades Saturday. The talks were the first time the two countries met since President Donald Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Un agreed in June to restart negotiations after a failed summit in February.