SEOUL, June 19 (NNN-Xinhua) — South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul, the country’s top policymaker in charge of inter-Korean affairs, on Wednesday called for the rapid resumption of denuclearization negotiations between the N.Korea and the United States.
Kim made the remark during a security forum in Seoul, hosted by the unification ministry, saying the most important would be the prompt resumption of talks between Pyongyang and Washington though it would take time to narrow down differences in technical issues, according to local media reports.
The minister said he had knowledge of the N.Korea and the United States preparing for new negotiation plans based on their respective assessments on the second summit between top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump that ended with no agreement in late February in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.
Trump was slated to visit Seoul on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Japan’s Osaka next week. South Korean President Moon Jae-in expressed his hope to meet again with the D N.Korea leader as early as possible.
Stressing the importance for the top-down approach in the denuclearization talks, the unification minister also put an importance on working-level talks at various levels to narrow differences in a concrete manner.
Kim said the role of working-level talks would be important for the successful N.Korea -U.S. summit, noting that all-out efforts should be made to lead the third N.Korea -U.S. summit into the practical denuclearization and the operation of the peace process on the Korean Peninsula.
He said that the denuclearization negotiations would not be a one-shot game, but a game of repetition, adding that the respective stances Pyongyang and Washington confirmed in the Hanoi summit would become a significant clue to a substantial outcome from the third N.Korea-U.S. summit.
NNN-XINHUA
