Across Asia: Republic of Korea

Envoy on Pyongyang visit

The Republic of Korea's (ROK) No 2 nuclear envoy downplayed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) latest refusal to give up its atomic weapons as he departed yesterday for a rare visit to Pyongyang aimed at pushing a stalled disarmament-for-aid pact forward.

"Relevant countries are making efforts to denuclearize North Korea," Hwang Joon-kook, Seoul's deputy nuclear envoy, told reporters as he left for a trip to the North to survey Pyongyang's unused nuclear fuel rods - the first high-profile ROK official to visit the country since a freeze in inter-Korean relations a year ago.