US invites North Korea to resume dialogue

Seoul, Jun 21 (EFE).- South Korea, the United States and Japan opened talks Monday with Pyongyang, after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called on his country to prepare both for negotiations and confrontation.

“We continue to hope that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will respond positively to our approach and our offer to meet anywhere and anytime without preconditions,” Sung Kim, US special envoy for North Korea, said Monday.

Kim spoke at a press conference after a three-way meeting in Seoul with the head of the South Korean nuclear negotiations, Noh Kyu-duk, and the Asia director general in Japan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry Takehiro Funakoshi, according to Yonhap news agency.

During the meeting, the three diplomats addressed the recent statements of the North Korean leader during a plenary session of the single party.

It was the first message in which the North Korean leader showed his willingness to dialogue with the United States since the arrival at the White House of President Joe Biden, whose administration is committed to an intermediate diplomatic path to that of his predecessors.

Despite the proposed dialogue, the US envoy said the Biden Administration will continue to implement the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council “to address the threat posed by [North Korea] to the international community,” and urged other countries to do the same.

Sung Kim took over as special envoy for North Korea in May after serving as acting deputy secretary of the State Department for East Asia and the Pacific.

The diplomat has been in Seoul since Saturday as part of a five-day visit aimed at coordinating positions with South Korea and Japan toward North Korea.

At the meeting, the countries agreed to continue cooperating to completely denuclearize the Korean peninsula and establish permanent peace in the territory, the South Korean Foreign Ministry detailed in a statement. EFE

co-mra/lds