The chief nuclear negotiators of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan plan to gather next week in Seoul to discuss ways to jointly cope with the escalating tension amid North Korea’s growing military threats, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said Friday.
Hwang Joon-kook, special representative for Korean peninsular peace and security affairs and chief delegate to the six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the North, will host the meeting on May 26-27. It will be attended by Sung Kim, special representative for North Korea policy at the U.S. Department of State, and Junichi Ihara, director general for Asian and Oceanian affairs at the Japanese Foreign Ministry. They last met in January in Tokyo.
“During the meeting, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan will share views on the recent situation surrounding North Korea and its threats and have in-depth consultations on various measures to move the nuclear issue forward substantively on all fronts, ranging from deterrence to pressure to dialogue,” the ministry said in a statement.
They are expected to focus more on ways to ramp up pressure as Pyongyang has been churning out military threats in recent weeks, warning of attacks on South Korean patrol vessels in the West Sea, testing a submarine-launched ballistic missile, and claiming to be “miniaturizing and diversifying” means of a nuclear strike.
At a news conference in Seoul on Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry blasted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un by name for the regime’s weapons programs, personnel management and breach of human rights, stressing the need for additional sanctions or other punitive steps to “change its behavior.”
Daniel Russel, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, on Thursday also criticized the underwater SLBM experiment as a “blatant violation” of U.N. Security Council resolutions. He also indicated that the issue would be discussed at the council’s sanctions committee next week and a summit next month between Presidents Park Geun-hye and Barack Obama.
“It is one of a series of provocative, threatening steps that North Korea has been taking that underscores the fact that it is trying to scare us where it should be trying to negotiate with us,” he said.
With heightened tension, Hwang’s drive over the past few months to open “exploratory talks” among the members of the six-nation denuclearization forum also including China and Russia could likely peter out and the cross-border standoff protract.
“We’ve tried from all possible directions to convince the North to come to the table but Pyongyang is not budging an inch. I think they’re really missing their good chance,” a Seoul official said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. “In light of the recent provocations and Kerry’s tone, the mood for dialogue will inevitably darken for a while.”
By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)
