Seoul urges North Korea to return to nuclear talks

South Korea’s nuclear envoy has urged North Korea to comply with United Nations Security Council resolutions related to its nuclear and missile programs and to resume dialogue, according to Seoul’s foreign ministry on February 24.

The appeal was made by Jeong Yeon-doo, vice minister for diplomatic strategy and intelligence, during the high-level segment of the Conference on Disarmament held Monday in Geneva, Switzerland, the ministry told Korean media.

“We call upon the DPRK to respond to our sincere efforts and to engage constructively in dialogue, and also to return to full compliance with the NPT and relevant UNSC resolutions,” Jeong stated, referring to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. DPRK is the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Jeong also expressed “deep” concern over what Seoul described as North Korea’s illegal military cooperation with Russia, emphasising that such cooperation must “cease immediately” because it seriously undermines international peace and security, according to the ministry.

The South Korean envoy noted that while the government continues to pursue the objective of the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean Peninsula, it acknowledges that achieving this goal will take considerable time.

“This is why we are pursuing a phased denuclearisation approach that starts with stopping the DPRK’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs through dialogue and negotiation, moves to reduction in the medium term, and ultimately proceeds to dismantlement in the long term,” he said.

North Korea has so far remained unresponsive to dialogue initiatives proposed by Lee Jae Myung. Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has characterised inter-Korean relations as those between “two states hostile to each other” and has pledged not to pursue reunification with the South.

By Tamilla Hasanova