South Korea's foreign ministry said Sunday its new nuclear envoy would visit China this week to discuss ways to revive long-stalled regional talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament.
Lim Sung-Nam will visit Beijing from Tuesday to Wednesday to meet with his counterpart Wu Dawei in his first trip to China as Seoul's chief negotiator for the six-party forum on the North, the ministry said.
Lim and Wu will assess the outcome of the meeting in Geneva between the Pyongyang and Washington envoys last week aimed at restarting the denuclearisation talks and possible responses, it said.
Both the North and the US reported some progress after the Geneva talks, but US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said later that there was no breakthrough.
The aid-for-denuclearisation forum involving the US, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia have been at a standstill since the last session in December 2008.
North Korea formally quit the six-party forum in April 2009, a month before staging its second atomic weapons test.
It has since repeatedly said it wants to come back without preconditions to the negotiations but Washington and its allies say Pyongyang must first take steps to show its sincerity.
