Pat Dollard | Young Americans

SEOUL, April 25 - (Kyodo)—South Korea’s chief nuclear envoy, Kim Sook, will visit the United States on Sunday to hold talks with his U.S. counterpart Christopher Hill on advancing the stalled six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said Friday.

The talks between Kim and Hill, set for Monday, will follow a U.S. team’s three-day visit to North Korea this week.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a report by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency on Thursday that its talks with the U.S. officials in Pyongyang have achieved progress.

“The negotiations proceeded in a sincere and constructive manner and progress was made there,” the North Korean spokesman was quoted as saying in the report.

The U.S. team was headed by Sung Kim, director of the State Department’s Office of Korean Affairs.

The six-party talks came to a standstill after North Korea missed an end-of-2007 deadline to declare its nuclear programs in exchange for energy assistance.

The United States has also pressed North Korea to come clean on two issues — North Korea’s alleged enrichment of weapons-grade uranium and suspicions that North Korea shared nuclear technology with other countries.

Kim’s visit to North Korea followed talks between Hill and his North Korean counterpart Kim Kye Gwan in Singapore earlier this month.

(AP)