South Korean President Park Geun-hye held talks with U.S. President Barack Obama on bilateral issues, an official said Tuesday, just days after a rare goodwill gesture toward Washington by North Korea.
The two leaders had enough time to hold useful consultations at a hotel on the sidelines of the APEC forum under way in Beijing, presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook said, without elaborating.
Park, Obama and 19 other Asia-Pacific leaders gathered in the Chinese capital for their annual summit to discuss how to promote regional integration, economic reform and comprehensive connectivity.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's 21 member economies, including the U.S., China and Japan, account for nearly 60 percent of global gross domestic product and almost half of world trade.
Park's planned meeting with Obama comes just days after North Korea released two Americans, who had been detained in the communist country, in what could be a rare conciliatory gesture toward the U.S.
Despite the North's surprise move, the U.S. said it remains concerned about North Korea's dismal human rights record and its nuclear aspirations and capabilities.
In Beijing, Obama said that the North's release of the two Americans is no solution to a "core problem" between the two countries and urged Pyongyang to demonstrate seriousness about giving up its nuclear program.
Park and Obama also are expected to discuss issues of mutual concern and the political situation on the Korean Peninsula.
The meeting also comes more than two weeks after the allies postponed Seoul's takeover of wartime control of its troops from Washington amid threats posed by North Korea.
The transfer had been scheduled for late 2015, but South Korean and U.S. officials said the new target year could be around the mid-2020s.
The U.S. has held wartime command of South Korean troops since the beginning of the 1950-53 Korean War, though it handed over peacetime control of the South Korean military to Seoul in 1994.
The U.S. keeps some 28,500 troops in South Korea as a deterrent against North Korea, a legacy of the war that ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap)
