NKorea skips meeting on US soldiers’ remains

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean officials did not show up Thursday for a meeting with Americans at the inter-Korean border to discuss the return of remains of U.S. soldiers killed in the Korean War, officials said.

Kim Jong Un committed to repatriating U.S. soldiers’ remains in his June talks with President Donald Trump. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week, after meeting with officials in North Korea, that working-level talks on the matter would be held on or around Thursday in Panmunjom, the truce village on the border between North and South Korea.

Although U.S. military officials went to Panmunjom for the meeting Thursday, their North Korean counterparts did not, according to a U.S. defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. A South Korean government official, who also asked for anonymity, confirmed that the North Koreans had not shown up at Panmunjom.

It was not clear whether the Americans had been deliberately stood up. Pompeo had cautioned that the date for the planned meeting at Panmunjom “could move by one day or two,” indicating that the two sides had not settled all the details before he left Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Saturday.

When the U.S. officials called the North Korean side at Panmunjom later Thursday, it proposed a generals’ meeting with the United States on Sunday, South Korean officials said. If the Pentagon accepts the proposal, it will be the first meeting between North Korean and U.S. military generals in nine years.

President Donald Trump said Thursday in Europe that he was making “great progress” in denuclearization talks with North Korea, citing what he called a “very nice note” he received last week from Kim.

In a letter that Trump posted on Twitter along with an English translation, Kim called his summit with the president in Singapore last month “the start of a meaningful journey” and raised the idea of another such encounter.

“I extend my conviction that the epochal progress in promoting the DPRKU.S. relations will bring our next meeting forward,” Kim wrote, using the initials for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.

And yet, at the United Nations, the US said North Korea has already exceeded the annual cap for oil imports and asked for an immediate halt to all transfers of oil to the country.

In a report submitted to the U.N. committee responsible for monitoring North Korean sanctions, the United States said North Korean tankers filled up with oil using ship-toship transfers at least 89 times in the first five months of 2018.