Pompeo on possible North Korean execution: ‘We’re doing our best to check it out’

The U.S. is looking into reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un executed top North Korean officials in March after a failed summit with President Trump.

“We’ve seen the reporting to which you are referring,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at a news conference in Berlin, according to Reuters. “We’re doing our best to check it out. I don’t have anything else to add to that today.”

{mosads}A South Korean newspaper reported Thursday that Kim Hyok Chol, North Korea’s special envoy to the U.S., was executed in March along with four other North Korean foreign ministry officials involved in the February summit in Hanoi, Vietnam. A fifth official was reportedly sentenced to hard labor.

In February, Kim Jong Un and Trump met for a second summit that resulted in no agreement on denuclearization.

Trump called the summit “very productive” but said “they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn’t do that.”