North Korea says it is ready to talk to America

THE speed with which Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s dictator, has developed missiles, now believed to be capable of hitting America, has been startling. Since the start of the year, the pace of diplomacy with the rogue state has been similarly rapid. On March 6th South Korean envoys returned from meeting Mr Kim in his capital, Pyongyang, with a message for America. He is willing, they said, to sit down and talk, even about denuclearising the Korean peninsula—an American condition for talks that North Korea had rejected just days before. The North has not contradicted the South Korean statement, although its media talk of “open-hearted” talks without mentioning denuclearisation.