South Korea‘s top nuclear envoy will leave for China this week to discuss ways to resume the long-stalled six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Seoul‘s foreign ministry said Monday.
Hwang Joon-kook is scheduled to visit Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday to hold a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei, according to the foreign ministry.
“The two sides plan to exchange views over the situation on the Korean Peninsula and have in-depth talks on ways to reopen the denuclearization talks,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The planned visit comes as the top nuclear negotiators from South Korea, the United States and Japan met last week in Tokyo to have a trilateral meeting over North Korea’s nuclear issues.
The six-party talks on North Korea‘s nuclear programs -- 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.
Pyongyang 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 relations between Washington and Pyongyang have deteriorated as the U.S. slapped fresh sanctions on the North earlier last month following Pyongyang’s alleged hacks on Sony Pictures.
At a meeting with reporters in Beijing on Friday, Sung Kim, Washington‘s top nuclear envoy, did not explicitly deny a South Korean media report that Washington had offered to meet with Pyongyang in China, the second leg of his regional trip to Asia.
But North Korea claimed Sunday that it had invited Kim to visit Pyongyang during his trip to Asia last week, but the U.S. rejected the offer.
Meanwhile, the three envoys from Seoul, Washington and Tokyo expressed strong support for South Korea’s efforts to coax North Korea to come forward for dialogue.
The trilateral meeting came amid concerns here that there might be a gap between Seoul and Washington in dealing with North Korea.
