
NEW YORK -- Eighty-five days after they publicly sparred in Alaska, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi picked up the phone Friday, this time to speak about North Korea.
"Secretary Blinken and Director Yang discussed the United States' comprehensive DPRK policy review, focusing on the need for the United States and the PRC to work together for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement, referring to North Korea and China by the abbreviations for their formal names of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the People's Republic of China.