hankyoreh

The second round of working-level talks on North Korea’s denuclearization will be held in Shenyang, China, from August 16-17. Meeting participants will discuss the next step following the North’s nuclear shutdown, disablement and reporting on its nuclear programs. A working-group meeting for economic and energy support that five other nations will provide to North Korea in exchange for the nuclear disablement was held at the truce village of Panmunjeom earlier this month.

In an interview with Yonhap News Agency on August 15, Chun Yung-woo, the chief South Korean negotiator to the six-party talks, said, “The negotiation is aimed at fixing the deadline for disabling the nuclear facilities and reporting on the North’s nuclear programs.”

Negotiators from the 6 nations are expected to focus on preparing a technical, concrete roadmap for the disablement of the North Korean nuclear program within the year. Lee Keun, the bureau director of American Affairs in the Foreign Ministry of North Korea, will take part in the talks. Christopher Hill, the U.S. chief negotiator, arrived at Shenyang on August 15.

Earlier this week, North Korea and the United States met in Beijing and held discussions on the agenda to be discussed at the upcoming negotiations. They include the denuclearization of the North, the removal of North Korea from the United States’ list of terrorist-sponsoring countries and the U.S. law regarding enemy countries that bans trading with communist regime including North Korea.

Hill said that the venue for the negotiations will not be in North Korea or other countries in Northeast and Southeast Asian region, meaning that Beijing will be a leading candidate for the encounter. The Chinese capital was the place where the two held talks in January.

As the January meeting in Berlin paved the way for the February breakthrough on dismantling the North’s nuclear program, in which the North agreed to shut down and disable its nuclear facilities, the second round is also expected to lay the groundwork for the six-party talks to be held in early September. The first working-group meeting between the North and the United States took place in New York in March of last year.