SEOUL: The top diplomats of South Korea and the United States held phone talks ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Seoul later this month, Seoul’s foreign ministry said Monday.
During her visit to Russia on Sunday night (Moscow time), South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha talked on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about Trump’s visit to Seoul and the situation on the Korean Peninsula, the ministry said in a statement.
Trump was scheduled to visit Seoul on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Osaka, Japan on June 28-29.
During the 15-minute dialogue, Kang and Pompeo shared the view that Trump’s trip to South Korea will be a crucial opportunity to discuss ways on the complete denuclearization of and the settlement of permanent peace on the peninsula.
Trump’s Seoul visit would come since the denuclearization talks between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States have been stalled after the second summit between top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and Trump, which ended with no agreement in late February in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.
Kang and Pompeo agreed to continue close consultations on the peninsula issues, sharing the need for consultations on situations in the Middle East, including the recent attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.
The South Korean foreigner minister has been in Moscow for talks with her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Monday.
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