Nuke envoys of US, S. Korea, Japan to meet in Seoul in mid-December

SEOUL - Top nuclear envoys of the United States, South Korea and Japan have agreed to meet in the South Korean capital of Seoul in mid-December, Seoul's foreign ministry said on Thursday.

Foreign ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuk told a press briefing that Kim Hong-kyun, who represents South Korea in the long-stalled six-party talks to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, would meet in Seoul with his US and Japanese counterparts around the middle of this month.

The spokesman said the meeting schedule came in consideration of the adoption of a new UN Security Council resolution on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and its follow-up sanctions against the DPRK expected to come out soon from the three allies.

Seoul said it plans to announce its unilateral sanctions on Pyongyang Friday, after the UN Security Council unanimously adopted the resolution over the DPRK's fifth nuclear test on Sept 9.

The fifth test came just eight months after Pyongyang's fourth atomic bomb detonation in January and the subsequent launch in February of a long-range rocket.

The agreed-upon nuclear talks between the three allies would be the first since South Korea, the United States and Japan held such a meeting in Tokyo on June 1.

The six-party dialogue, which involves South Korea, the DPRK, China, the United States, Russia and Japan, has been suspended since late 2008.