A group of former top U.S. government officials and academics have met with a top North Korean government representative to discuss the Asian nation’s nuclear missile program.
The meeting, which took place Sunday in Singapore, came just weeks after the U.S. accused North Korea of hacking into Sony’s computers and issuing threats in retaliation for the entertainment giant’s release of the satirical film “The Interview.”
“I don’t think we will get into that very much,” Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council, told the Associated Press.
North Korea, which is an isolated, totalitarian state, does not have formal diplomatic ties with the U.S. A truce has existed between North Korea and South Korea, a U.S. ally, since 1953, halting the Korean War.
The team from the North at the Singapore meeting is led by Ri Yong Ho, who has been chief negotiator for recent six-party talks on reining in North’s nuclear program.
