North Korea marked the beginning of 2004 with a flurry of diplomatic offensives, which led to its participation in two six-party talks, two summit meetings with China and Japan, and its first-ever military talks with South Korea. However, this brisk diplomacy went into a holding pattern in the second half of the year with no substantial progress in the nuclear talks. The stalemate was reinforced by passage of the U.S. North Korean Human Rights Act, South Korea9s nuclear experiments, and hostile rhetoric toward North Korea voiced in the U.S. presidential election campaigns.