SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korean officials did not turn up to a Thursday meeting with the U.S. military about repatriating the remains of the war dead, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation.
The two sides had been expected to meet at the Korean Peninsula's Demilitarized Zone and discuss the return of U.S. troop remains from the 1950-1953 war -- an arrangement the State Department had announced after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's visit to Pyongyang last Friday and Saturday.
On Thursday, however, Department of Defense and United Nations Command officials were left waiting in the DMZ's Joint Security Area. The expected North Korean officials never arrived, according to the official who requested anonymity as he was not permitted to talk publicly about the event.
"We were ready," the official said. "It just didn't happen. They didn't show."
A State Department spokesman declined to comment, but noted that Pompeo said after his talks in Pyongyang last week that the date for the meeting remained flexible. Just before departing Pyongyang, Pompeo said the meeting was set for July 12 but that it "could move by one day or two."
In a statement released to reporters on Thursday, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said that North Korean military officials were now seeking a meeting with their U.S. counterparts on Sunday.
It was not immediately clear why North Korean officials did not attend the meeting on Thursday or whether they had ever confirmed their intention to attend.
Ahead of the summit in Singapore, North Korean officials had failed to attend a planning meeting with their U.S. counterparts, causing tension between the two negotiating partners.
The repatriation of the remains of U.S. soldiers from North Korea has been a major issue between Washington and Pyongyang since the end of the Korean War, when thousands of Americans were left in Korea either missing in action or as prisoners of war.
Hundreds of remains have been repatriated since 1990, but the process has been fraught with mistrust. The transfer of remains between North Korea and the United States has not taken place since 2005.
President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had pledged to recover more American remains when they met in Singapore on June 12. A statement signed by both leaders promised the "immediate repatriation of those already identified."
Trump told supporters a week later that the remains of 200 Americans "have been sent back." Military officials later denied that, but told reporters that they expected the remains to arrive within days and had made arrangements for their arrival, such as storing caskets at the DMZ.
Trump said Thursday 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, though it made no mention of nuclear weapons.
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 DPRK-U.S. relations will bring our next meeting forward," he wrote, using the initials for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name.
The letter released by Trump is filled with flowery language, but it makes no mention of nuclear weapons or any intention by the North to give them up.
"I deeply appreciate the energetic and extraordinary efforts made by Your Excellency Mr. President for the improvement of relations between the two countries and the faithful implementation of the joint statement," it said.
The tone of the letter was starkly at odds with that of North Korean officials last week in the wake of a visit to Pyongyang, the North's capital, by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Pompeo had visited Pyongyang last week in a bid to ease any misunderstandings between the two parties and find areas where they could make progress. Though the secretary of state described the talks as "productive" after they concluded, North Korea's Foreign Ministry later released a statement that criticized the "regrettable" U.S. negotiating style.
Speaking Thursday in Singapore, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said that North Korea's statement was a "strategy that can often be seen in negotiations." Moon also said that Pompeo's visit had showed that both Pyongyang and Washington had the same view of denuclearization, according to his spokesman Yoon Young-chan.
The South Korean government is "constantly in contact with its U.S. counterpart" about progress of the talks on war remains repatriation, said Roh Kyu-deok, a spokesman for South Korea's Foreign Ministry, but it declined to comment on any details about the issue.
According to estimates from the Pentagon, 7,700 U.S. troops are still unaccounted for from the Korean War. Of that number, 5,300 are believed to have been killed north of the 38th parallel, which marks the border between the two Koreas.
OIL SMUGGLING
The United States says North Korea is illegally smuggling refined petroleum products into the country beyond the quota of 500,000 barrels per year allowed under U.N. sanctions.
U.S. documents sent to the U.N. Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea and obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday cite 89 instances between Jan. 1 and May 30 in which North Korean tankers likely delivered refined products "illicitly procured" via ship-to-ship transfers.
The documents say that even if each tanker delivered only one-third of its listed capacity, the total volume would be above the 500,000 barrel annual quota. If loaded at 90 percent, the U.S. said the tankers would have delivered nearly 1.4 million barrels of refined products to North Korea, almost triple the quota.
The United States asked the committee to urgently inform all U.N. member states and the general public that North Korea has breached the quota.
It also asked the committee to call on all U.N. member states to exercise "enhanced vigilance" against North Korea's attempts to obtain refined petroleum products, and to prevent ship-to-ship transfers.
The U.S. said China and Russia have reported to the sanctions committee that they have continued to sell refined petroleum products to North Korea.
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"These sales and any other transfer must immediately stop since the United States believes the DPRK has breached the ... refined petroleum products quota for 2018," the United States said.
Information for this article was contributed by Min Joo Kim and Carol Morello of The Washington Post, Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times and Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/13/2018