The US special representative for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea affairs, Stephen Biegun, said on Wednesday that his country was ready to engage in working-level talks with Pyongyang for the Korean Peninsula’s denuclearisation.
“We are prepared to engage as soon as we hear from our counterparts in North Korea (DPRK),” said Stephen Biegun, Xinhua news agency reported.
Biegun made the remark after a meeting in Seoul with Lee Do-hoon, South Korea’s special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, according to reports.
During the 10-day training, North Korea raised tensions with its own missile and other weapons tests. But North Korea’s typical harsh rhetoric over the drills largely focused on South Korea, not the United States, in a suggestion that it’s still interested in resuming nuclear talks with the US.
President Donald Trump said recently that he received a “beautiful” three-page letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Trump further said that Kim wanted to meet again to restart the talks after the US-South Korean drills ended and that Kim offered him “a small apology” over a series of weapons tests.
The two leaders met again in late February in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, but the second DPRK-US summit ended without any agreement. Under the Singapore deal, Kim and Trump agreed to the complete denuclearisation of and the peace settlement in the peninsula.
The DPRK criticised the South Korea-US joint military drills as a rehearsal for a northward invasion, test-firing short-range projectiles into the East Sea before and during the drills to protest against it.