Flags of the United States and North Korea
Flags of the United States and North KoreaiStock

The United States is quietly pursuing direct diplomacy with North Korea, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

The diplomatic efforts are ongoing despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent public assertion that such talks are a waste of time.

Using the so-called “New York channel,” Joseph Yun, U.S. negotiator with North Korea, has been in contact with diplomats at Pyongyang’s United Nations mission, the official told Reuters.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged last month that the United States was directly communicating with North Korea on its nuclear and missile programs.

Shortly after Tillerson's comments, Trump wrote on Twitter that he thought Tillerson was "wasting his time" trying to negotiate with North Korea. He subsequently vowed that he would not fail as his predecessors did in trying to stop North Korea’s nuclear program.

Several weeks later, on October 17, Tillerson said he would continue “diplomatic efforts ... until the first bomb drops.” The official’s comments were the clearest sign since that time the United States was directly discussing issues beyond the release of American prisoners, despite Trump having dismissed direct talks as pointless.

At the same time, noted Reuters, there is no sign, however, that the behind-the-scenes communications have improved a relationship vexed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, the death of U.S. university student Otto Warmbier days after his release by Pyongyang in June and the detention of three other Americans.

Among the points that Yun has made to his North Korean interlocutors is to “stop testing” nuclear bombs and missiles, the official told the news agency.

Pyongyang in recent months has sparked global alarm by conducting a sixth nuclear test and test-launching missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, while Trump and the North's ruler, Kim Jong-Un, have traded threats of war and personal insults.

Trump said last week that the U.S. was "prepared for anything" when it came to the North Korea nuclear crisis.

"We're so prepared like you wouldn't believe," he told Fox News, adding, "You would be shocked to see how totally prepared we are if we need to be.”

At the start of Trump’s presidency, Yun’s instructions were limited to seeking the release of U.S. prisoners.

“It is (now) a broader mandate than that,” said the State Department official, declining, however, to address whether authority had been given to discuss North Korea’s nuclear and missile program.

The last high-level contact between Yun and the North Koreans was when he traveled to North Korea in June to secure the release of Warmbier, who died shortly after he returned home in a coma, the State Department official told Reuters.

The official added that “the preferred endpoint is not a war but some kind of diplomatic settlement”, stressing that diplomacy “has a lot more room to go.”