Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrived Wednesday in North Korea, the communist state's official media reported, as he sought to secure the release of an American imprisoned there amid a deepening nuclear standoff between the two countries.
"Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his group arrived in Pyongyang," the North's Korean Central News Agency said in a brief dispatch seen in Seoul, adding Pyongyang's chief nuclear envoy, Kim Kye-gwan, received him at the airport.
The trip is Carter's first known trip to North Korea in 16 years. In 1994, he met with then North Korean leader Kim Il-sung and helped defuse
soaring tensions on the Korean Peninsula and set the mood for a breakthrough in nuclear talks.
U.S. officials have refused to describe Carter's trip as anything more than private and humanitarian. A team of U.S. officials had traveled to North Korea earlier this month in a failed attempt to bring home Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a 30-year-old who was sentenced to eight years of hard labor and fined an equivalent of US$700,000 in May for illegal entry.
Gomes last month attempted suicide out of frustration that his country was not doing enough to save him, according to the North's official media. Pyongyang had reportedly promised to set Gomes free if Carter visited the communist country.
The visit, which the U.S. declined to formally confirm, came a day ahead of a three-day trip to South Korea by Chinese nuclear envoy Wu Dawei, who
met with his North Korean counterpart last week in Pyongyang.
Trying to put behind the regional tension that has soared since the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, North Korea and China have been
seeking to resume six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear arms programs that had been in limbo since 2008.
South Korea and the U.S., which are two of the negotiating partners along with Russia and Japan in the talks, have dismissed the chances of resuming the talks unless the North apologies for the sinking that killed 46 sailors. Pyongyang denies any role.
Focus has centered on whether Carter's visit would provide fresh impetus for possible dialogue between North Korea and the United States and the
stalled six-way talks. Following former U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit in August last year to North Korea on a humanitarian mission to free two U.S. journalists held there, Washington sent its top nuclear envoy, Stephen Bosworth, to Pyongyang in December to urge the regime to return to the six-party talks, only to see the call go unanswered.