China has been “positively” considering holding a trilateral, but informal, dialogue with South Korea and the United States for effective policy consultations on North Korea, a Seoul official said Thursday.

The idea of holding a so-called 1.5-track security dialogue, in which government officials and academics from South Korea, the U.S. and China participate in their individual capacity, has been floated by South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se with the aim of stepping up their joint policy coordination toward an increasingly belligerent North Korea.

Yun and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks in Beijing on Wednesday and agreed to open a 24-hour hotline for prompt policy consultations on North Korea.

“China is positively considering starting a 1.5-track strategic dialogue with South Korea and the U.S.,” said the senior official at Seoul’s Foreign Ministry who attended the Yun-Wang talks.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the three nations could speed up a launch of the three-way dialogue “to deepen their strategic communications at higher-level officials.”

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have heightened since the North’s third nuclear test in February. In response to the latest U.N. sanctions that punished Pyongyang for conducting the nuclear test, the North has unleashed a torrent of bellicose threats to Seoul and Washington.

Early this month, North Korea withdrew all of its 53,000 workers from the Kaesong industrial zone, forcing the 123 small-scale South Korean factories there to suspend their operations. Pyongyang also threatened to permanently shut down the complex, the last-remaining symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement.

After weeks of warlike threats and indications of a missile launch, South Korea and the U.S. offered dialogue but said North Korea should be serious about abandoning its nuclear weapons program before any talks can happen.

North Korea issued a list of preconditions for talks with South Korea and the U.S. last week, including a withdrawal of outside sanctions against the North, but the allies rejected such preconditions. (Yonhap News)