hankyoreh

The head of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s North American bureau

North Korean Foreign Ministry North America bureau chief Choe Son-hui declared in an Oct. 21 visit to Russia that the Six-Party Talks framework to address its nuclear program “is, as we have stated numerous times, no longer valid” and that Pyongyang would “no longer be focusing on Sept. 19 Joint Statement [of 2005].”

Choe’s remarks came during a presentation on the second day of the 2017 Moscow Nonproliferation Conference, an event organized by Russia’s Center for Energy and Security Studies (CENESS).

“The country that is trying to crush and bring down Choson [North Korea] is the US,” she said, adding that the North would “not be returning to the Six-Party Talks until issues with the US have been resolved.”

The conference was attended by around 200 experts and current and former officials from some 40 countries, with South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sending North Korea nuclear diplomacy planning team chief Lee Sang-hwa. Lee’s attendance had some predicting a meeting could take place between the South and North Korean diplomatic officials – but reports indicated the two merely exchanged basic greetings with little conversation.

In a keynote speech for the first day of the conference on Oct. 20, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that “the most important thing in the current situation is to prevent a military clash that will lead to a humanitarian and ecological disaster” and that there was “no alternative to resolving the North Korean issue through diplomatic efforts based in dialogue,” ITAR-TASS reported.

By Jung In-hwan, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]