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SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il visited a tractor factory and cattle farm in a northern town, state media reported Thursday, in an apparent sign he was unlikely to meet a visiting US envoy.
Kim provided his trademark "field guidance" at the newly built Kanggye Stock Farm and the Kanggye General Tractor Plant in Jagang province, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
It did not mention the date of the visits but Kim's movements are often announced the following day.
US envoy Stephen Bosworth arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday to try to persuade the North to return to six-party nuclear disarmament talks. The Stalinist state quit the negotiations in April before staging a second atomic weapons test.
The State Department said he and his six-strong team would return Thursday to South Korea as scheduled. Analysts and officials had previously said he was unlikely to meet Kim.
The South's Yonhap news agency said Bosworth was expected to land in Seoul around noon (0300 GMT).
It said he would report on his trip to Washington before briefing Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan and chief nuclear negotiator Wi Sung-Lac, and was expected to hold a press conference around 6:00 pm (0900 GMT).
No confirmation was immediately available.
Bosworth's trip is the first official contact between Washington and Pyongyang since President Barack Obama took office in January, pledging direct diplomacy with adversaries.
Official media in the communist state have carried no reports on the visit, apart from a one-sentence dispatch announcing his arrival.
Washington says his purpose was solely to assess whether the North is willing to return to the six-party negotiations, and whether it will reaffirm its commitment to a denuclearisation accord reached in 2005.
Analysts say Pyongyang appears to be pushing for a peace treaty with the United States to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War. Washington says this can only be discussed mutilaterally after the six-party forum is resumed.
In October North Korea told key ally China it was ready to return to the six-nation talks, but only if direct dialogue with the United States proves satisfactory.
- AFP/yb
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