South Korea’s chief nuclear envoy will visit China later this week for talks with his counterpart on North Korea and its nuclear programs, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

Wi Sung-lac plans to meet with Chinese nuclear envoy Wu Dawei on Thursday to discuss the nuclear standoff and other North Korea issues as well as strategies to deal with them, the ministry said in a statement without elaborating.

But Pyongyang’s newly acknowledged uranium enrichment program is expected to be a key topic.

North Korea revealed in November that it was running a uranium enrichment facility, adding to international concerns about the communist nation’s nuclear capabilities. Uranium, if highly enriched, can be used to make weapons, providing Pyongyang with a second way of building atomic bombs after its existing plutonium-based program.

South Korea and the U.S. have called for a tougher international response to the uranium program, saying it violates U.N. Security Council resolutions banning the communist regime from nuclear activity as well as the North’s own 2005 commitment to forgo atomic ambitions.

In particular, South Korea is trying to muster international support for its push to take the uranium issue to the U.N. Security Council. Backing from China is crucial for the South Korean move because it is a veto-holding permanent member of the Council.

Beijing, after maintaining a vague position on the issue, expressed “concern” about the program after a summit with the U.S. last month. But it is still unclear if Beijing would back Seoul’s push to bring up the issue at the Council. 

(Yonhap News)