(Photo: Yonhap)
South Korea and the United States have agreed on the urgent need for an early resumption of dialogue with North Korea.
Seoul's deputy nuclear envoy, Lee Tae-woo, and his U.S. counterpart, Jung Pak, held working -level talks in Seoul on Thursday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the two sides shared assessments of the recent Korean Peninsula situation, including the North's short-range missile launches on Wednesday and shared the understanding that it's urgent to resume dialogue at an early date and make progress in denuclearization negotiations.
"Going forward, the two sides agreed to continue to strengthen water-tight cooperation to achieve the compete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," it said in a press release.
Later in the day, Pak held working-level talks with unification ministry officials and also discussed bilateral cooperation on humanitarian assistance to North Korea, agreeing to continue working in close consultation.
The American envoy arrived in earlier this week after she accompanied the U.S. special representative for the North, Sung Kim, in bilateral and trilateral talks with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Noh Kyu-duk and Takehiro Funakoshi, respectively, in Tokyo.