According to the paper, in response to its request to confirm his visit to the North, Gregg said, “I do not want to talk about my visit to the North,” but foreign officials have raised the possibility that he may have met with key North Korean leaders and been asked to convey the North’s messages concerning six-way talks to the U.S. The paper also said that Gregg arrived in Pyongyang via Beijing on August 2 and returned home on August 7.

Gregg, an American official that North Korea trusts to a certain degree, once visited Pyongyang at its invitation in November 2002, when suspicion over its highly enriched uranium development program surfaced, and conveyed the North’s high-ranking officials’ opinions to the U.S. government.

(Jeong Gwon-hyeon, khjung@chosun.com )