Moon taps new foreign minister to revive talks

SEOUL/WASHINGTON－The Republic of Korea's President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday named career diplomat Chung Eui-yong as the country's new foreign minister, just hours before Joe Biden's move into the White House as US president.

The nomination of Chung, 74, to replace Kang Kyung-wha was seen as a bid to help revive stalled denuclearization talks with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The reshuffle came two days after Moon called for Biden to hold dialogue with the DPRK to build on progress made by DPRK top leader Kim Jong-un and US president Donald Trump at their first meeting in Singapore.

Kim and Trump agreed in Singapore to foster new relations and work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Chung had served as the director of the presidential National Security Office for the first three years of the five-year Moon administration, which began in May 2017.

During his tenure, Chung was deeply involved in the Korean Peninsula peace process, including negotiations between the DPRK and the United States, the Blue House said in a statement.

Full review

On Tuesday, Biden's nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the new administration planned a full review of Washington's approach to Pyongyang to look at ways to increase pressure on the country to come to the negotiating table over its nuclear weapons.

At the same time, the US would also look at providing humanitarian help to the DPRK if needed, Blinken said.

Asked by Senator Ed Markey whether he would, with the ultimate aim of the DPRK's denuclearizing, support a "phased agreement" that offered tailored sanctions relief to Pyongyang in return for a verifiable freeze in its weapons programs, Blinken replied: "I think we have to review, and we intend to review, the entire approach and policy toward North Korea (the DPRK), because this is a hard problem that has plagued administration after administration. And it's a problem that has not gotten better－in fact, it's gotten worse."

Biden's senior official for Asia policy, Kurt Campbell, had some praise for Trump's unprecedented summits with Kim, even though no concrete progress was made.

Xinhua - Agencies