US reaches out to North Korea to resume ties

Bloomberg

National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said the White House has “reached out” to North Korea, seeking the resumption of diplomacy that has been dormant since October, Axios reported, citing an interview with O’Brien.
The Trump administration has reached out to North Korea via “various channels,” O’Brien said, adding that there was some optimism that North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has not yet delivered the “Christmas gift” he had promised to the US — expected by many to be a nuclear weapons test.
This does not mean North Korea won’t carry out some kind of test in the future, the official said. In the same interview, O’Brien said China is the biggest geopolitical challenge to the US.
North Korea’s state-run media said earlier it would not rely on the personal relationship between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump and does not intend to trade its nuclear weapons for a lift of sanctions. South Korea’s National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong told reporters that Trump asked South Korea to send Kim a birthday greeting.