South Korea's nuke envoy to visit Washington for talks over Korean peninsula affairs
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Mr Lee Do-hoon, South Korea's special representative for Korean peninsula peace and security affairs, and Mr Stephen Biegun, US special representative for North Korea affairs during a meeting in Seoul on May 10, 2019.
PHOTO: REUTERS
SEOUL (XINHUA) - South Korea's chief nuclear envoy will visit Washington this week for talks over the Korean peninsula affairs, Seoul's foreign ministry said on Monday (Oct 7).
Mr Lee Do-hoon, South Korea's special representative for Korean peninsula peace and security affairs, will make a four-day visit to Washington from Monday to meet Mr Stephen Biegun, US special representative for North Korea affairs.
During the meeting, Mr Lee and Mr Biegun will discuss ways to cooperate between Seoul and Washington for the complete denuclearisation of and the permanent peace settlement in the Korean peninsula, the Seoul ministry said.
Mr Lee will also hold a bilateral meeting with Mr Takizaki Shigeki, director-general of the Japanese foreign ministry's Asian and Oceanian affairs bureau, who will visit Washington during the same period as Mr Lee's trip, as well as a trilateral meeting including Mr Biegun.
The series of meetings would come after the North Korea-US working-level denuclearisation talks were held in the Swedish capital of Stockholm on Saturday (Oct 5).
Mr Kim Myong Gil, the North Korean delegation's chief negotiator, said after the eight and a half hours of talks with the US side that the negotiations broke down "entirely because the United States has not discarded its old stance and attitude" and came to a negotiating table with an "empty hand".
The US State Department said its delegation had "good discussions" with its North Korean counterpart, expecting to return to the working-level talks in two weeks.
The North Korea-US denuclearisation talks have hit a stalemate since the second summit between top North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump ended without any agreement in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi in late February. The two leaders first met in Singapore in June 2018.
In an impromptu meeting in late June at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom, Mr Kim and Mr Trump agreed to resume the working-level dialogue.