South Korea's top nuclear envoy will travel to China this week to discuss efforts to revive long-stalled international nuclear negotiations with North Korea, a diplomatic source said Monday. 

Hwang Joon-kook plans to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wu Dawei, and other officials in Beijing on Thursday, the source said on the condition of anonymity. 

Hwang is set to leave for China's northeastern provinces, which border North Korea, on Tuesday and hold meetings with Chinese experts on the Korean Peninsula, before flying to Beijing, the source said. 

The planned meeting between Hwang and Wu coincides with a visit by Sydney Seiler, the United States special envoy for the six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue, to Beijing on Thursday. 

Seiler was scheduled to arrive in Seoul on Monday as the first leg of his three-nation tour that will also take him to Tokyo. 

The six-party talks, involving South Korea, North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan, were last held in December 2008.

North Korea has conducted two more nuclear tests since then.

North Korea wants an unconditional resumption of the six-party talks, but South Korea and the U.S. demand that Pyongyang first take concrete steps to show its denuclearization commitment. (Yonhap)