South Korea will hold high-level trilateral talks next week with the United States and Japan on North Korea, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.
In the two-day session starting Tuesday in Seoul, the regional powers will "share assessments of recent situations in North Korea and its threats," the ministry said.
"(The three nations) will also have in-depth consultations on various ways for substantive progress in dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue in terms of deterrence, pressure and dialogue," it said in a press release.
South Korea will be represented by Hwang Joon-kook, special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs. His U.S. and Japanese counterparts will be Sung Kim, special representative for North Korea policy, and Junichi Ihara, director-general of the Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, respectively.
They serve as top delegates to the now-suspended six-way talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. The negotiations, also involving China and Russia, were last held in December 2008.
The North has been refusing to return to the talks, as it continues to develop its nuclear and missile capabilities.
It recently announced a successful test-launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile and also claimed to now be able to put nuclear warheads onto missiles.
Seoul, Washington and Tokyo are seeking U.N.-level measures against Pyongyang's SLBM test, saying it is in violation of U.N. resolutions banning it from carrying out any launch using ballistic missile technology. (Yonhap)
