SEOUL-- Diplomats of South Korea and the United States held talks in Seoul on Thursday to discuss the Korean Peninsula situation, the foreign ministry said, after North Korea ratcheted up tensions with two ballistic missile launches the previous day.
The talks between Rim Kap-soo, director general at the ministry's peninsula peace regime bureau, and Jung Pak, the deputy U.S. special representative for North Korea, came amid concerns the North's missile launches could hamper Seoul's drive to resume dialogue with Pyongyang.
Pak arrived in South Korea earlier this week after she accompanied the U.S. special representative for the North, Sung Kim, during bilateral and trilateral talks in Tokyo with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Noh Kyu-duk and Takehiro Funakoshi, respectively.
"The two sides held working-level consultations over the recent Korean Peninsula situation and various ways to engage with North Korea so as to make substantive progress on the peninsula peace process, the ministry said in a press release.
On Wednesday, the North fired off the two short-range missiles following its weekend test-firings of a new type of long-range cruise missile in an apparent show of force amid the prolonged deadlock in nuclear talks with the United States.
South Korea's First Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kun and the chief nuclear envoy, Noh Kyu-duk, also held separate phone talks with their U.S. counterparts, Wendy Sherman and Sung Kim, respectively, on Wednesday.
Source: Yonhap News Agency