South Korea, Japan, US to hold talks on DPRK's nuke program soon

Top nuclear envoys of South Korea, Japan and the United States will hold tripartite talks next week in Washington to discuss the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear weapons program, Seoul's Foreign Ministry said Thursday. Hwang Joon-kook, the newly appointed diplomat who represents South Korea at the six-party talks, will travel to Washington for four days from Sunday to hold a dialogue next Monday with his U.S. counterpart Glyn Davies and Japanese counterpart Junichi Ihara, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a press release. Hwang was named Thursday as South Korea's chief negotiator for the six-party talks, which have been suspended since late 2008. The post became vacant earlier this year as former envoy was promoted to vice foreign minister. It will be the first talks in about five months among the three allies, or members of the six-way dialogue aimed at dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear program together with China, Russia and the DPRK. The ministry said the three allies will discuss all the issues on the DPRK's nuclear program and the recent situation on the Korean Peninsula. The trilateral talks came as a follow-up to the summit between South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Barack Obama held on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands in late March. During the summit, the three heads of state shared views on holding talks among the top nuclear envoys, while stressing the need for the senior-level defense dialogue. The sixth round of the Defense Trilateral Talks among Seoul, Tokyo and Washington will be held for two days from April 17 in Washington to discuss ways of cooperation in the DPRK's nuclear and missile threats. Tensions escalated on the Korean Peninsula as the DPRK conducted short- and medium-range missile tests in the past weeks. Pyongyang fired off two Rodong ballistic missiles, which can fly as far as 1,300 km carrying nuclear warhead, last Wednesday, triggering censures from the UN Security Council that has banned the DPRK from testing ballistic missile technology. The two Koreas exchanged hundreds of rounds of artillery shells across the western maritime border Monday, and two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), dispatched by the DPRK, crashed in a South Korean island just south of the sea border in Paju near the land border. The small-sized UAVs took aerial shots of military installations and even the South Korean presidential office Blue House.