Seoul: South Korea and the US held a “working group” meeting on Monday to coordinate policy on North Korea, with Seoul’s push to allow individual trips to Pyongyang expected to be a key agenda item.
The chief US delegate, Deputy Special Representative for North Korea Policy Alex Wong, went straight into a closed-door meeting with his South Korean counterpart Rhee Dong-yeol, reports Yonhap News Agency.
Wong arrived in Seoul on Sunday for the talks.
The two sides were expected to discuss South Korea’s push for inter-Korean exchanges amid the prolonged deadlock in the nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang since the collapse of the second summit in February 2019 between US President Donald Trump and the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un. In his press conference for the new year, President Moon Jae-in vowed to push for an expansion of inter-Korean cooperation as a way to facilitate the stalled nuclear talks, such as allowing individual tourism to the communist state, which does not fall under UN sanctions against the North.
The Unification Ministry spokesperson Yoh Sang-key in charge of inter-Korean relations said the issue of individual tourism does not necessarily need consultations with Washington because such tourism is not banned under UN sanctions, though the government plans to brief the US on it.
Yoh reiterated the South Korean position that individual tour by South Koreans to the DPRK’s scenic resort of Mount Kumgang was not subject to consultations between Seoul and Washington, saying that South Korea would explain its stance to the United States from the cooperation perspective.
Tour by South Koreans to Mount Kumgang, launched in 1998, had been run for about 10 years before being shutdown in 2008 when a South Korean tourist was shot dead by a DPRK soldier after allegedly venturing into off-limit areas.
The two sides were also expected to discuss a wide range of issues related to the North, including the reconnection of cross-border railways and roads, a project that the two Koreas agreed upon in 2018 but which has been stalled ever since. (Agencies)
