The primary purpose for my going to North Korea was to talk about the possibility of the United States providing humanitarian assistance. As I mentioned, North Korea is a country that isn't able to grow enough food to feed its population. The United States has a policy of basing humanitarian assistance on need and not on politics. One of my purposes in going to North Korea was to be able to conduct an assessment of the need in North Korea.
A second concern and consideration for the United States is that when we provide humanitarian assistance, we want to be assured that the aid we provide will get to those who are most in need. My discussions with the North Koreans were focused on those issues. We were able to reach some agreements that we thought were helpful. We were able to conduct an assessment that we thought was productive.
We ran into difficulties when the North Koreans abrogated agreements that they had reached with us in other areas and we didn't have credible assurance that the aid would be delivered to where it was needed. We ultimately ended up suspending the aid.
However, we were able to have good discussions with the North Koreans on providing humanitarian assistance. We were able to begin discussions on human rights issues that I thought were useful and productive. The relationship has suffered a little bit since then, and we haven't been able to continue in some of those areas, but I'm hopeful that we'll be able to do that sometime soon.