Senior diplomats of South Korea and the United States have held telephone talks to discuss bilateral ties and policy coordination in dealing with North Korea's evolving nuclear and missile capabilities, the foreign ministry here said Wednesday.

Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam spoke with his US counterpart John Sullivan on Tuesday night for about 15 minutes, according to the ministry. The talks were the first of their kind since Sullivan took office as US deputy secretary of state in May.

The two reaffirmed that the rock-solid alliance between the two countries is a prerequisite for preventing the North's provocations and successfully resolving its nuclear issue. 


Lim, in particular, assessed that the US has sent a "resolute" and "balanced" message with regard to the issues related to the Korean Peninsula, while Sullivan emphasized that it is a stance of Washington to seek all diplomatic and economic measures to "peacefully" resolve the North's nuclear problem, the ministry said.

Their phone conversation came as tensions mounted amid a war of words between the US and North Korea. The North earlier said that it is considering a missile exercise around the US-controlled island of Guam. The US has warned such an action will be met militarily.

Lim and Sullivan also agreed to strengthen their joint military readiness by pushing to revise missile guidelines in a way that doubles the weight of warheads aboard South Korean missiles.

In 2012, the allies revised their ballistic missile guidelines extending Seoul's missile range limit from 300 kilometers to 800 km amid the North's advancing nuclear and ballistic missile capacities. Under the deal, Seoul can currently load a warhead of up to 500 kg on missiles with a range of up to 800 km.

Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and her US counterpart Rex Tillerson agreed earlier this month to begin negotiations to revise the guidelines on Seoul's missile capability "as early as possible" when they met in Manila on the sidelines of a regional security forum. (Yonhap)