Friday, 20 August 2021 (YJC)_ The U.S. envoy for North Korea will visit South Korea this weekend amid a standoff over South Korea-U.S. military exercises.
The U.S. envoy for North Korea will visit South Korea this weekend, South Korea's foreign ministry said on Friday, amid a standoff over South Korea-U.S. military exercises that the North has warned could trigger a security crisis.
U.S. special representative for North Korea Sung Kim arrives in Seoul on Saturday for a four-day visit, during which he will meet his South Korean counterpart, Noh Kyu-duk, and other officials, the ministry said.
"Noh will hold talks with Kim on Monday and discuss ways of cooperation to bring substantive progress for the complete denuclearisation and lasting peace of the Korean peninsula," the ministry said in a statement.
The allies began annual military exercises this week, mostly involving computer simulations with minimum personnel and no live field training in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
North Korea sees such exercises as a rehearsal for war against it.
It warned South Korea that the drills would risk a tentative thaw in relations between the two Koreas, which reopened hotlines last month, a year after North Korea suspended them.
Shortly after preliminary training for the exercises began last week, the North stopped answering the hotlines.
Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a powerful ruling party official, accused the South of "perfidious behaviour".
The new U.S. administration of President Joe Biden has said it would explore diplomacy to achieve its goal of the complete denuclearisation of North Korea but would not seek a grand bargain with Kim.
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