South Korea will push for trilateral negotiations with North Korea and the United States as a way of resuming Washington-Pyongyang denuclearization talks after the second US-North Korea summit in Hanoi, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said on Monday.
“We will seek various ways to create a venue for the resumption of North Korea-US dialogue,” Kang said at a meeting of National Security Council of South Korea, as quoted by the Yonhap News Agency, adding that these ways would comprise the so-called 1.5-track dialogue with the participation of officials and experts from both Koreas and the United States.
The last meeting between Trump and Kim, long-anticipated by all sides, ended up with no results. As the US president described it, he was forced to walk away after Kim Jong-un demanded that all sanctions be lifted in exchange for complete de-nuclearisation. The US president stressed he was not ready to go for such a step. However, Trump praised progress in talks and said that negotiations would continue at the level of experts.
A similar meeting between the two Koreas and the United States was held in Sweden in January, shortly before the summit in Hanoi.