A group of U.S. experts, who on Tuesday entered North Korea via China, has returned to Beijing after having talks on the Stalinist country’s denuclearization process, Yonhap reported Saturday citing Japan’s Kyodo news agency.
The group summarized the meeting as “very helpful” but didn’t elaborate on their meetings with North Korean officials.
The group, led by John Lewis, professor emeritus at Stanford University, was the first private-sector U.S. delegation to visit North Korea since the inauguration of Barak Obama as U.S. president. Currently, the U.S. administration is in the process of formulating its policy on Pyongyang.
The other members of the group include Siegfried Hecker, an expert on nuclear arms reduction at Stanford University; David Straub, a former State Department official who dealt with North Korea in 2002-2004 and now is the Korean Studies Program associate director at Stanford.
Talks on North Korea’s denuclearization have been stalled for months over the disagreement on the methods to verify Pyongyang’s nuclear activities. North Korea recently upped ante of its hostile rhetoric on the U.S. and South Korea, which analysts believe is intended to draw attention from the U.S.