SEOUL, South Korea — Former President Jimmy Carter arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday on a mission to win the release of an American held prisoner in North Korea, according to The New York Times.

Analysts in Seoul said Mr. Carter, on his second trip to Pyongyang, would also try to help break an impasse in relations between the United States and North Korea.

Mr. Carter was greeted at Pyongyang airport by Kim Kye-gwan, a senior North Korean diplomat, according to the North’s official news agency, KCNA. Mr. Kim is North Korea’s main envoy to the six-nation talks on ending its nuclear weapons program. The talks have been stalled for more than two years.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported earlier that Mr. Carter, 85, was travelling with his wife on a private jet.

Officially, Washington described his trip as a private humanitarian mission to secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, an American from Boston who was sentenced in April to eight years of hard labor and fined $700,000 for illegally entering the North. But Mr. Carter’s trip loomed large because of his track record of helping defuse the first Korean nuclear crisis more than 16 years ago.

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