China's point man on North Korea held talks with officials from the South yesterday ahead of crucial six-nation talks aimed at resolving the standoff over the communist state's nuclear weapons program.
Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi and South Korea's top Foreign Ministry officials called for joint efforts to secure concrete results at the second round of meetings, which begin Feb. 25.
Meanwhile, North Korea said yesterday it urged Japan to support its offer to freeze all its nuclear activities in return for economic concessions from the US.
"We hope that substantive results could be made through joint efforts at the second round of talks," Wang said, heading into discussions with Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck in Seoul.
Wang and Lee represented their nations in a first round of talks among the US, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan in August, which ended without much progress.
"Whatever difficulties surface, we must firmly push ahead with the process of peace talks," said Wang, who also discussed the upcoming talks with Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon and Vice Foreign Minister Choi Young-jin.
They had "in-depth" discussions on a range of issues, including the North's nuclear freeze proposal, said Cho Tae-yong, chief of Seoul's newly established task force for the nuclear dispute.
North Korea has offered to freeze all its nuclear activities as a first step in resolving the nuclear dispute, only if Washington provides free oil shipments, lifts economic sanctions and removes the Communist nation from its list of countries that sponsor terrorism.
Washington has demanded that North Korea first start dismantling its nuclear programs.
Before coming to Seoul, Wang discussed the nuclear dispute with North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan.
North Korea said it had won Chinese support for its freeze proposal during Kim's visit to Beijing.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS