FILE -Choe Sun Hui, then deputy director general of the Department of U.S. Affairs of North Korea Foreign Ministry, briefs journalists outside the North Korean embassy in Beijing, China, on June 23, 2016. North Korea’s state media said Thursday, July 14, 2022, that the country’s foreign minister, Choe Sun Hui, sent letters to leaders in the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk a day earlier to convey the North’s decision to recognize their independence and its willingness to develop diplomatic relations with both. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)