The top nuclear negotiators from South Korea, the United States and Japan will meet in Tokyo next week to discuss ways to resume the long-stalled six-party talks on North Korea‘s denuclearization, officials said Thursday.

Seoul’s top nuke envoy, Hwang Joon-kook, will meet with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Sung Kim and Junichi Ihara, on Wednesday to discuss Pyongyang‘s nuclear weapons program and situations on the Korean Peninsula, according to Seoul’s foreign ministry.

For the talks, Hwang will make a three-day visit to Tokyo from Tuesday to Thursday, it added.

The six-party talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia have been dormant since late 2008, when Pyongyang walked away from the bargaining table.

North Korea has called for the resumption of the six-party talks without preconditions following its third nuclear test in February 2013. But Seoul and Washington have insisted that the North should first show its sincere commitment toward denuclearization.

The trilateral meeting comes as Pyongyang‘s relations with the U.S. have further deteriorated after Washington slapped fresh economic sanctions on Pyongyang in response to the North’s alleged cyberhacking on Sony Pictures.

The U.S. has vowed to identify and impose sanctions on financial institutions doing business with North Korea so as to cut the belligerent nation off from the international financial system.

Kim, the U.S. nuclear envoy, told a House committee briefing on Jan. 14 that Washington is using the full range of tools at its disposal to increase the cost of North Korea‘s misbehavior.

The North offered on Jan. 10 to temporarily halt nuclear tests if the U.S. suspends its annual military exercises with South Korea this year, a proposal flatly rejected by Seoul and Washington.

North Korea threatened to conduct another nuclear test in reaction to a U.N. resolution condemning its dismal human rights record, raising tension on the peninsula. (Yonhap)