SEOUL, South Korea —South Korea opposes engaging the North in another round of “talks for talks’ sake,” its foreign minister said Monday, after a special North Korean envoy reportedly told Beijing that the North was ready to return to the negotiating table.
The envoy, Vice Marshal Choe Ryong Hae, made the statement when he met the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, in Beijing on Friday, according to the official Chinese news media.
Reporting the same meeting, however, North Korea’s state-run news media reported neither Choe’s comment nor Xi’s call for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
That glaring gap between the two Communist allies cast doubt on the prospects for reconvening the long-stalled six-nation talks intended to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs. China wanted to revive negotiations after a hiatus of more than four years. But the United States and South Korea insisted that reconvening the forum was meaningless unless the North convinced them that it was serious about giving up its nuclear weapons.
“We oppose talks for talks’ sake,” Yun Byung-Se, the South Korean foreign minister, said Monday. “North Korea must demonstrate its sincerity through action by honoring its international obligations and promises regarding denuclearization.”
Asked to elaborate, Yun referred to the international agreements the North had signed, as well as U.N. resolutions imposing sanctions on the country. Those documents, among other things, called on North Korea to freeze its nuclear programs before their eventual dismantlement and to accept nuclear monitors from the United Nations. The North Korean envoy’s trip to Beijing last week followed an easing of political speech from the North’s government, which had for months issued bellicose pronouncements.
But there has been no indication that the North was shifting its stance on nuclear weapons development.
