This week, for example, Japan and North Korea sat down in Pyongyang to discuss normalizing relations.
Mr Richardson said the delegation was expecting to be in Pyongyang for two and a half days.
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Most of these suspects live not in Pyongyang or even in lesser cities, but in the countryside.
Chung Ju Yung, the veteran founder of Hyundai, South Korea's biggest conglomerate, arrived in Pyongyang on June 28th.
Both, along with the rest of Asia and America, were watching closely the talks in Pyongyang between North and South Korea.
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Rodman, 51, said on Twitter as he arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday.
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Military ministers for the two Koreas will meet in Pyongyang on Friday.
South Korea's president recently offered to build roads and ports in the North and urged the government in Pyongyang to resume official talks.
An Associated Press report out of Pyongyang said the SIM cards would also allow foreigners to contact foreign embassies in Pyongyang and international hotels.
China will want to know who is now taking over in Pyongyang, he says, and will want that transition to be as smooth as possible.
The Secretary-General had repeatedly called on the new leadership in Pyongyang to address international concerns and start building confidence with neighboring countries and the international community.
The U.S. State Department has called for Mr. Bae's release on humanitarian grounds and says he met with officials from the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang last Friday.
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Yet the talks, which were held in Seoul and will be followed by a similar round in Pyongyang, fell short of the expectations of many South Koreans.
The project has also attracted Andrei Lankov, a Seoul-based historian of North Korea who grew up in the Soviet Union and went to college in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
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Richardson told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview in Pyongyang that the group is also asking for fair and humane treatment for an American citizen detained in North Korea.
Shown a photo of a snarling Rodman, piercings dangling from his lower lip and two massive tattoos emblazoned on his chest, one North Korean in Pyongyang recoiled and said: "He looks like a monster!"
Japanese national broadcaster NHK reported that an unidentified Foreign Ministry official in Pyongyang acknowledged the firing of the missiles, but Ri told reporters that diplomats like himself are unaware of what the military is doing.
He has tried South Korea: two years ago a summit in Pyongyang with South Korea's president, Kim Dae-jung, ended with promises of large dollops of South Korean aid in return for greater contact across the inter-Korean divide.
This week, in another event of interest to the Americans, a group of government ministers from South Korea is in Pyongyang, the North's capital, for four days of talks with their counterparts, which started on Tuesday October 14th.
Clinton's 20 hours in Pyongyang could pave the way for renewed diplomatic efforts, including direct dialogue between the United States and North Korea, the re-freezing of North Korea's nuclear program and even North Korea's return to the six-party talks.
Mr. Gates said he doubted that diplomacy would succeed in persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
It also broadcast images of ranks of North Koreans massed in central Pyongyang on Friday to listen to congratulatory speeches.
That's what happened when Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun flew in to attend a July 27 meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the seven-year-old security panel in which Pyongyang would participate for the first time.
Notable examples were missions to Pyongyang in 1994 by former President Jimmy Carter and then-Congressman Bill Richardson.
Park has said she won't yet change her policy, which was built with the high probability of provocations from Pyongyang in mind.
Mr. Iijima said upon landing in Beijing from Pyongyang on his way back to Tokyo Friday evening that he wouldn't be releasing any details of his visit.
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