By Heejin Kim<\/p>\n
SEOUL, Aug 28 (Reuters) – South Korea supports U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to resume dialogue with North Korea, but aims to ensure its \u200csecurity posture is not weakened and that Seoul is not sidelined, South Korea’s \u200cnational security adviser said on Friday.<\/p>\n
Seoul believes the resumption of talks between the U.S. and North Korea should \u200bfocus on progress on the North Korean nuclear weapons issue and must not undermine the country’s security readiness, Wi Sung-lac told reporters.<\/p>\n
“One point to keep in mind is the need to coordinate with the United States to ensure that any resumption of U.S.-North Korea dialogue leads \u200cto substantive progress on the \u2060North Korean nuclear issue, alongside efforts to establish a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula,” Wi said.<\/p>\n
To achieve these aims, policy coordination and \u2060communication between South Korea and the United States were more important than ever, he said.<\/p>\n
Wi cited Trump’s order earlier this month to substantially scale back major joint military drills between the \u200btwo allies, \u200bsaying the U.S. president was signaling a willingness \u200bto engage with North Korea.<\/p>\n
At the \u200csame time, Seoul should ensure it was not “sidelined” in Washington’s efforts to restart talks with Pyongyang, Wi said.<\/p>\n
Trump cited in part Seoul’s refusal to offer help in the Iran war for cutting short the Ulchi Freedom Shield drills this month and said they sent a wrong message to North Korea. Trump has been seeking a new summit with North \u200cKorean leader Kim Jong Un.<\/p>\n
The two met three \u200btimes in 2018 and 2019.<\/p>\n
South Korea, Japan and the \u200bUnited States will conduct joint military \u200bdrills from September 9 to 11 to test readiness against North \u200cKorea’s missile and nuclear weapons threats, South \u200bKorea said on Friday.<\/p>\n
Wi \u200bsaid South Korea is seeking to deepen cooperation with Washington on a range of issues that have sometimes caused friction between the allies.<\/p>\n
These include South Korean investment \u200bin the U.S. agreed \u200cunder a trade deal, the treatment of U.S.-listed e-commerce firm Coupang, security cooperation, \u200bintelligence sharing and the transfer of wartime operational control, he said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jack \u200bKim and Heejin KimEditing by Ed Davies)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Heejin Kim SEOUL, Aug 28 (Reuters) – South Korea supports U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to resume…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[68730,14488,31,171,34,68729,2175,33,6644,1484,3343,9515],"class_list":["post-135355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-korea","tag-donald-trumps","tag-heejin-kim","tag-korea","tag-korean","tag-north-korea","tag-north-koreas","tag-north-korean","tag-south-korea","tag-south-koreas","tag-south-korean","tag-u-s","tag-wi-sung-lac"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}