US, China envoys meet to discuss North Korea missile launches

US special envoy Sung Kim and Chinese counterpart Liu Xiaoming on Tuesday held talks in Washington on North Korea’s recent missile tests and ways to encourage Pyongyang to engage in negotiations.

“On April 5 Special Representative for the DPRK Sung Kim met with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Affairs Liu Xiaoming in Washington, DC, to discuss recent developments in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK),” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.

Price said Special Representative Kim condemned the DPRK’s March 24 ICBM launch, the latest in a series of increasingly escalatory actions by the DPRK.

Kim noted that each of the DPRK’s 13 ballistic missile launches this year constituted clear violations of multiple UN Security Council resolutions and posed a serious threat to regional stability, and reiterated the importance of responding firmly to these escalatory actions.

“Kim reaffirmed that the United States is committed to engage in serious and sustained diplomacy with the DPRK,” the State Department spokesperson added.

She said it was “a very big mistake” on the part of the South Korean defence minister to speak about a preventive strike against North Korea.