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BEIJING (Yonhap News) ― South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yoon Byung-se said Wednesday he and his Chinese counterpart have agreed to open a 24-hour hotline for prompt policy consultations on North Korea.
“With regard to North Korea’s several acts of raising tensions, the two sides agreed to closely work together to convince the North not to carry out additional provocations, while easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula,” Yun told reporters after a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi during his one-day visit to Beijing.
Along with the North’s bellicose rhetoric, the fate of an inter-Korean industrial complex in the North’s border city of Kaesong was on the agenda during the talks, Yun said.
Yun said that he raised the issue of the Kaesong industrial complex, describing the North’s temporary suspension of the industrial park as a “non-humanitarian act.”
He did not say how Wang had responded to his explanations.
Meanwhile, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called for joint efforts with South Korea to maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and realize denuclearization on the peninsula. Li made the comment during a courtesy call on him by Yun.
Yun also met with Wang Jairui, the head of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, though details of their discussions were not immediately available.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have heightened since the North’s third nuclear test in February. In response to the latest U.N. sanctions that punished Pyongyang for conducting the nuclear test, the North has unleashed a torrent of bellicose threats to Seoul and Washington.
Early this month, North Korea withdrew all of its 53,000 workers from the Kaesong industrial zone, forcing the 123 small-scale South Korean factories there to suspend their operations. Pyongyang also threatened to permanently shut down the complex, the last-remaining symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement.
After weeks of warlike threats and indications of a missile launch, South Korea and the U.S. offered dialogue but said North Korea should be serious about abandoning its nuclear weapons program before any talks can happen.
North Korea issued a list of pre-conditions for talks with South Korea and the U.S. last week, including a withdrawal of outside sanctions against the North, but the allies rejected such pre-conditions.
The Yun-Wang meeting also came at a delicate time in Northeast Asia as Japan sparked anger from both Seoul and Beijing with visits by its Cabinet ministers and lawmakers to a controversial war shrine that glorifies Tokyo’s wartime past.
