North Korea Dropped Out of Meeting With Pence at Last Minute, U.S. Says<br />During his visit to Asia, Mr. Pence did not rule out a possible meeting, but vowed to use any encounter with the North Koreans to drive home Washington’s demand<br />that Pyongyang "once and for all abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile ambitions." While Mr. Pence was reiterating Washington’s position, North Korea stole headlines in the South and beyond with a surprise message of dialogue and reconciliation.<br />While Mr. Pence and Ms. Kim were in South Korea, Mr. Moon’s government publicly called for dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang.<br />Nauert said that The vice president was ready to take this opportunity to drive home the<br />necessity of North Korea abandoning its illicit ballistic missile and nuclear programs,<br />Mr. Pence’s meeting with the North Koreans was to occur after the vice president had warned<br />that the country was about to face the "toughest and most aggressive" set of United States sanctions yet, though he did not detail what those would be.<br />20, 2018<br />Vice President Mike Pence had planned to secretly meet with a high-level delegation of North Korean leaders while he was at the Winter Olympics in South Korea this month,<br />but the North Koreans canceled at the last minute, according to the State Department.<br />performance in South Korea last week," said Lee Sung-yoon, a Korea expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
