South Korea, the United States and Japan will hold vice-ministerial talks next week in Seoul to discuss North Korea’s denuclearization and other regional and global issues, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said Monday.
South Korean First Vice Minister Lim Sung-nam and his U.S. and Japanese counterparts Tony Blinken and Akitaka Saiki will meet here next Tuesday for the third trilateral diplomatic consultations. The three-way meeting was last held in Tokyo in January.
The three countries are also coordinating the vice ministers’ schedules in Seoul to arrange bilateral meetings between Lim and Blinken and between Blinken and Saiki, the ministry said.
“(We) expect that the consultations will offer a venue for them to discuss concrete ways to strengthen their cooperation over the North’s denuclearization and the enforcement of sanctions on the North, which were stressed during the trilateral summit on March 31,” the ministry said in a press release.
The ministry added that the three senior officials would also discuss regional and global issues regarding healthcare, climate change, development and maritime cooperation.
The planned trilateral talks came amid a flurry of trilateral efforts to ratchet up pressure on Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and missile programs through international and individual sanctions and diplomatic pressure. (Yonhap)
