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By Seok Jin-hwan, Blue House correspondent

On June 17, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and US President Barack Obama spoke on the phone about various issues connected with the Korean peninsula, including the North’s proposal for talks with the US and the outcome of the US-South Korea summit.

During the phone call, Park said, “Holding talks for the sake of talks only earns North Korea time to make its nuclear weapons more sophisticated,” according to a senior Blue House official.

“President Park received a call from President Obama at 11 am and talked to him for 20 minutes,” said Blue House spokesperson Kim Haeng at an afternoon press briefing. “They discussed the results of the US-ROK summit that took place on June 7 and 8 and exchanged a wide range of views about North Korea.”

Obama called Park directly from US presidential airplane Air Force One, which was en route to Northern Ireland for a summit with the leaders of the G8.

“Obama said that, during the US-China summit, he had asked that China also work for the joint goal of denuclearizing North Korea since North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs are becoming a serious threat to the security of South Korea and the US, along with Northeast Asia,” Kim said. After this, Obama explained to Park that Chinese leader Xi Jinping also affirmed China’s commitment to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and said that they would not accept North Korea as a nuclear power while emphasizing their intention to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue through dialogue.

The Blue House did not make any other specific comments about the details of the phone conversation between the two leaders. However, it can be inferred from the remark about exchanging “a wide range of views about North Korea” that the two leaders discussed North Korea’s proposal from the previous day of high-level talks with the US.

A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council had already said that North Korea must take action showing that it will abide by its international obligations before any dialogue takes place. It appears that Obama called Park shortly after that from the airplane to communicate the US position on this matter to her directly.

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