South Korea's point man on North Korea left Monday for the United States in his rare overseas trip, as the Park Geun-hye administration is stepping up efforts to draw international support for its preparations for reunification.
Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae's weeklong visit is also intended to seek understanding on Seoul's approach towards Pyongyang amid drawn-out military tensions on the peninsula.
He plans to stay in Washington D.C. from Tuesday through Thursday, where he will meet with Acting Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman and senior Congressmen including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), according to his ministry.
Rubio is a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's East Asian and Pacific Affairs subcommittee, and Royce chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Ryoo is also scheduled to attend the Korea Global Forum to be hosted by the East Asia Institute and hold a roundtable meeting with American experts on North Korea.
Before flying into the U.S. capital, Ryoo will travel to New York for a series of meetings with officials from such U.N.
agencies as the UNFPA, UNICEP and the UNDP to discuss humanitarian aid for the North.
On his way back to Seoul, he will stop by Los Angeles, home to the largest Korean community in the U.S., to deliver a lecture to youths there.
It will be the first trip to the U.S. by South Korea's unification minister since 2011, when Ryoo's predecessor, Yu Woo-ik, visited there.
A unification ministry official said Ryoo is considering similar trips to other nations next year to exchange views on the North Korea issue.
In May, he traveled to Shanghai, China, to participate in the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) on behalf of President Park Geun-hye. It was his first overseas trip since taking office nearly two years ago. (Yonhap)
