Next month marks the 60th anniversary of an end to the three-year Korean War. The United States signed an armistice agreement with North Korea and China on July 27, 1953. South Korea refused to sign it though it promised not to obstruct its implementation.

Permanent peace has yet to be established, though. North Korea, which launched a long-range missile in December and conducted its third nuclear test in February, has until recently provoked both South Korea and the United States with warlike rhetoric. If North Korea is determined to arm itself with nuclear weapons, it stands little chance that the cease-fire accord will be replaced by a peace treaty anytime soon.

Apparently under pressure from China, North Korea has all of a sudden offered to resume inter-Korean talks on a wide range of pending bilateral issues. South Korea is now readying itself to reopen long-stalled dialogue with the North. Contact is being made over a high-powered, ministerial-level conference.

Denuclearization is a multilateral issue of great concern to South Korea, the United States and China, which are banding together to put pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambition. But it may not be addressed in the forthcoming inter-Korean talks. North Korea makes no mention of restarting the suspended six-way process of scrapping its nuclear weapons program.

Hopefully, the fledging inter-Korean dialogue could lead to a Pyongyang-Washington contact, and then to the six-way talks. Denuclearization is a key point in the long path to the replacement of the armistice agreement with a peace treaty.

Against this backdrop, President Park Geun-hye is set to hold talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during her June 27-30 visit to Beijing. The issue of bringing the two economies closer will undoubtedly take center stage in the summit.

Denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula will certainly top the summit agenda, too. Recalling she took up the issue at her recent talks with U.S. President Barack Obama, Park says she will now seek Xi’s endorsement of her initiative on building trust with North Korea, the final stage of which envisions the communist state dismantling its nuclear weapons program in exchange for massive South Korean investments in its projects to improve the crumbling infrastructure.

Winning China’s support is vital for the successful launch of Park’s initiative. No other country in the world is capable of exercising as much influence on North Korea as China does. After all, China is North Korea’s sole military ally and main trading partner.

China, which used to play host to the six-party talks, has no reason to withhold its support for Park’s initiative. What it needs to do is help all the missing pieces in the pursuit of regional peace and prosperity fall into place.