U.S. envoy on N.K. policy to travel to S. Korea, China, Japan

The U.S. special representative for North Korea policy will visit China, South Korea and Japan next week for talks on how to deal with the communist regime in Pyongyang, the State Department announced Thursday.

Amb. Glyn Davies will be accompanied by Sydney Seiler, the new special envoy for the six-party nuclear talks, and Allison Hooker, director for Korea at the National Security Council, on the trip that will take them to Beijing on Sunday, Seoul on Tuesday and Japan on Wednesday, it said.

In all three nations, Davies will meet with his counterparts:

China's special representative for Korean peninsula affairs, Wu Dawei; South Korea's special representative for Korean peninsula peace and security affairs, Hwang Joon-kook; and the Japanese Foreign Ministry's director general for Asian and oceanian affairs, Junichi Ihara.

Without elaborating, the department said Davies will "discuss North Korea policy" during the trip. But a diplomatic source in Washington said his Asia swing is part of routine consultations among six-party talks partners aimed at exchanging views on how to resume the long-stalled negotiations.

The six-party talks have been deadlocked for nearly six years since 2008. North Korea wants an unconditional resumption of negotiations, but South Korea and the U.S. demand that Pyongyang first take concrete steps demonstrating its denuclearization commitment.

As the negotiations idled, the North conducted two nuclear tests and a series of long-range rocket launches, fueling concern the regime is closer to developing nuclear missiles. The six-party forum brings together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the U.S.

The trip also comes as the North is holding three American citizens captive, possibly as leverage to reopen negotiations with Washington. Reports have said that the U.S. has offered to send Davies to the North to negotiate the release of the three, but Pyongyang has rejected the proposal.

The widespread view is that the North wants a higher-level U.S. official. (Yonhap)