<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) \u2014 South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday downplayed concerns that the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue will be accompanied by an easing of international sanctions and pressure on North Korea over its nuclear program.<\/p>\n
Moon made the comments in a meeting with political party leaders a day after South Korea announced an agreement with the North to hold a rare summit in April. Senior South Korean officials who met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang on Monday also said the North expressed a willingness to hold talks with the United States on denuclearization and normalizing ties.<\/p>\n
Conservative opposition leaders expressed concern during Wednesday\u2019s meeting at Seoul\u2019s presidential palace that North Korea could use the talks as a way to reduce the pressure, and also questioned whether the North in genuinely interested in abandoning its nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
SEE ALSO: Trump takes credit for Kim Jong-un\u2019s sudden shift on talks <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe sanctions and pressure on North Korea aren\u2019t maintained by South Korea alone \u2014 these are actions based on U.N. Security Council resolutions, and then there are strong unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States,\u201d Moon said, added that the pressure on the North could only be reduced by \u201csubstantive progress\u201d on denuclearization.<\/p>\n \u201cThese international efforts (to pressure the North) cannot be loosened by inter-Korean dialogue. We don\u2019t aim for that to happen and it\u2019s also impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n Moon\u2019s presidential national security director, Chung Eui-yong, who led the South Korean delegation that met with Kim, is to leave for the United States on Thursday to brief U.S. officials on the outcome of his trip to the North. Chung told reporters on Tuesday that he received a message from North Korea intended for the United States, but didn\u2019t disclose what it was.<\/p>\n Japan has responded cautiously to the South Korean announcement of summit talks, saying Tokyo\u2019s policy of keeping maximum pressure on North Korea is unchanged.<\/p>\n Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Wednesday that dialogue for dialogue\u2019s sake is meaningless and that the allies \u201cshould fully take into consideration lessons from our past dialogues with the North, none of which achieved denuclearization.\u201d He said Japan is on the same page as the United States, citing U.S. Vice President Mike Pence as saying Washington\u2019s pressure campaign is unchanged, with all options still on the table.<\/p>\n China, which is North Korea\u2019s only major ally, cheered the exchanges between the Koreas and called for a return to six-nation talks on denuclearization that it previously hosted.<\/p>\n Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters Wednesday that China was \u201cpleased to see the positive outcomes from those exchanges and interactions between the two sides. \u2026 We hope the North and South will earnestly implement their consensuses and proceed with the process of reconciliation and cooperation.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Associated Press writers Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Chris Bodeen in Beijing contributed to this report.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday downplayed concerns that the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue will be accompanied by an easing of international sanctions and pressure on North Korea SEOUL, South Korea (AP) \u2014 South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday downplayed concerns that the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue will be accompanied by an easing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[324,34],"class_list":["post-2623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-worlds","tag-north-korea","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pornvas.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}