Obama sending veteran envoy to North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea -- After a year of tensions, President Barack Obama is sending a veteran diplomat to North Korea today for the highest-profile talks between Pyongyang and Washington since he took office pledging to reach out to America's adversaries.

A key question is whether Stephen Bosworth can extract a firm commitment from Pyongyang to rejoin nuclear disarmament talks -- whether North Korea is serious, this time, about peace on the peninsula.

Bosworth is scheduled to fly from a U.S. military base near Seoul to the North Korean capital today to see if the North will return to the international disarmament talks that it abandoned earlier this year.

The State Department said that the U.S. envoy had a narrow mission -- to find out whether the North would return to the stalled disarmament talks.