1st LD: Top negotiators of S.Korea, U.S., Japan to gather for DPRK nuke talks

Top nuclear envoys of South Korea, the United States and Japan will meet in Seoul for two days from May 26 to discuss the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) 's nuclear program, Seoul's foreign ministry said Friday.

The negotiators, who respectively represent their countries in the six-party talks to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, would share assessments of recent situations and threats from the DPRK, the South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement.

The senior diplomats would also have in-depth consultations on various ways to make substantive progress in the DPRK's nuclear issues at all levels, including deterrence, pressure and dialogue, the ministry said.

The negotiators would involve Hwang Joon-kook, South Korea's special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs along with Sung Kim, U.S. special representative for the DPRK policy and Junichi Ihara, Japan's director-general of the country's foreign ministry's Asian and Oceanian affairs bureau.

The aid-for-disarmament talks, including South Korea, the DPRK, China, the United States, Russia and Japan, were initiated in Beijing in August 2003 but have stalled since December 2008. Endi