Pompeo looking into reports that North Korea executed envoy to the U.S.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that the United States is trying to check reports that a senior North Korean official involved in Pyongyang's non-proliferation talks with Washington has been executed.

"We've seen the reporting you're referring to," Pompeo said in response to a question from a reporter to a news conference in Berlin. "To check it out, we are doing our best. I have nothing else to add to that today. "A South Korean newspaper reported on Friday that North Korea executed a senior U.S. nuclear negotiating envoy and four other senior officials. But as ever with the so-called purge, North Korea, a country that closely guards its secrets, there are reasons to be cautious.

Although North Korea has not commented on its propaganda services, the report could be true in the conservative daily Chosun Ilbo. Previously, North Korea executed scapegoats to expose high-profile political flops, and the latest summit between leader Kim Jong Un and president Donald Trump ended in failure, leaving Kim embarrassed on the global stage.

However, it is important to note that both South Korean media and Seoul government have a history of reporting scoops on North Korea's inner workings that turns out to be wrong. After their reported demise, allegedly executed officials later appeared trotting alongside Kim on state television.

Friday's report is based on a single, unidentified "source that knows about North Korea"–with no details as to where their information was obtained. No major media in Seoul have matched the report so far or confirmed it by officials of the government, even anonymously.

The source of the newspaper said senior envoy Kim Hyok Chol and four other North Foreign Ministry officials were executed at the Mirim airfield for betraying Kim Jong Un after being won over by the U.S. Kim Hyok Chol led labor-level negotiations as North Korea's special U.S. affairs representative ahead of the U.S.-North Korean leadership summit in Hanoi in February.

The source also said that Kim Yong Chol, who had worked as the top nuclear negotiator in North Korea and met Trump at the White House during the summits, was sentenced to hard labor and ideological re-education.

That the report has been snapped up by global media reflects the hunger for any details about what's going on in North Korea as diplomatic efforts are wavering between Washington and Pyongyang, which controls its media and access to information both locally and abroad.

Negotiations have struck a stalemate as the North wants an end to crippling sanctions, but Washington says Pyongyang does not provide sufficient disarmament to allow that to happen.

There is now growing concern that the diplomacy that has flourished since the beginning of 2018 could be replaced by a return to the animosity that in 2017 caused some of the most realistic fears of war in years as the North staged a string of ever more powerful weapons and Kim and Trump traded intensely personal threats and insults.

North Korea has again tested weapons and boosted its belligerent rhetoric towards American and South Korean officials since the Hanoi nuclear summit ended in failure. Analysts believe this indicates that Pyongyang is attempting to displease the current stalemate without destroying diplomacy.

Seoul's spy service said Friday's report couldn't be confirmed, while the presidential Blue House said "it's inappropriate to make hasty judgments or comments." Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters in Berlin that he had seen the reports and that the U.S. was "doing our best to check it out." Thursday, Pyongyang's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper called out unspecified "traitors, turncoats demonstrating their loyalty to (the supreme leadership) only in words, and, worse still, changing their colors through the flow of trends" and said they'd come unleashed.

If Friday's report is wrong, for South Korean media and officials it would not be the first time.

In 2016, South Korean intelligence officials said Kim Jong Un had executed for corruption and other charges Ri Yong Gil, a former North Korean military chief. The state media of North Korea showed months later that Ri was alive and had several new senior posts.

The Chosun Ilbo reported in 2013 that Hyon Song Wol, a well-known North Korean artist the newspaper described as Kim's "ex-girlfriend," was publicly executed along with several other performers on charges of having sex and selling the videos themselves.

Hyon, the leader of Kim's hand-picked all-female Moranbong band, was very alive and later emerged as a key member of Kim's government in his meetings with Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Sometimes South Korea gets it right.

While many questioned the South Korean spy service's competence after failing to learn of Kim's father's 2011 death, Kim Jong Il, before it was announced by Pyongyang's state TV, the intelligence agency saved face in 2013 by releasing its finding that Kim's powerful uncle, Jang Song Thaek, had been purged days before North Korea announced his execution.