South Korea's nuclear envoy visits US as tensions flare with North Korea
18 June, 2020
South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator will carry talks with officials in Washington on Thursday (Jun 18) amid flaring tensions with North Korea after Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office and threatened military actions.
Lee Do-hoon's unannounced trip came days and nights after North Korea blew up a joint liaison business office in Kaesong, nearby the South Korean border and declared an end to dialogue with the South.
Lee is likely to hold consultations around officials, including Deputy Secretary of Talk about Stephen Biegun who had led denuclearisation negotiations with North Korea, Seoul's foreign ministry said.
Lee and Biegun can "assess the current problem on the Korean peninsula and discuss responses", the ministry said in a good statement.
South Korean tv set showed Lee coming to Washington's Dulles AIRPORT TERMINAL on Wednesday evening, where he declined to comment to reporters.
Pyongyang has increasingly snubbed Seoul's calls for engagement while efforts to restart inter-Korean economic projects stalled because of international sanctions made to rein found in the North's nuclear and missile programmes.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister, Kim Yo Jong, in Wednesday criticised South Korean President Moon Jae-on for failing woefully to implement a 2018 peace accord, saying Moon "put his neck in to the noose of pro-US flunkeyism".
Pyongyang has also taken issue more than defectors found in the South sending propaganda leaflets into North Korea.
Several defector-led groups regularly send back flyers carrying significant messages of Kim Jong Un, often as well as food, US$1 bills, mini radios and USB sticks containing South Korean dramas and news.
The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North's ruling Workers' Get together, said the demolition of the liaison office was the "first stage action" in its "holy war" aimed at punishing Seoul authorities for turning a blind eye to the defector's campaign.
"It had been an iron hammer of stern punishment meted away to those who had been having empty dreams while pursuing concealed hostile policy," it said found in a commentary.
The newspaper also ran a series of articles and photographs carrying angry ordinary citizens calling for retaliation and vowing to send anti-South leaflets over the border.
Source:
TAG(s):