SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea will broach North Korea separately with two different audiences on Thursday, holding talks with Beijing’s top diplomat in China and with visiting U.S. military leaders in Seoul.
In China, talks are expected to include South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s hopes for a declaration to end the 1950-1953 Korean War. The conflict halted with an armistice and not a peace treaty.
In Seoul, U.S. and South Korean top brass are expected to discuss ways to strengthen a military alliance whose main goal is deterring a conflict with Pyongyang, and being prepared to fight one if that fails.
“Unfortunately, our mission to ensure peace on the Korean peninsula remains incomplete. There are piles of tasks ahead of us,” South Korean Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum told U.S. and South Korean military leaders at a reception on Wednesday.
North Korea has so far rebuffed U.S. entreaties for diplomacy since President Joe Biden took over from Donald Trump, who had three summits with leader Kim Jong Un.
Seoul sees an “end of war declaration” as a way to build trust with Kim, restart stalled denuclearization talks, and eventually move toward a lasting peace agreement.
But Moon, who has tried to engage with North Korea throughout his presidency, is running out of time to clinch an agreement before his term ends in May.
South Korean national security adviser Suh Hoon will have talks with China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi in the Chinese city of Tianjin on Thursday on North Korea, the presidential Blue House said.
Critics of Moon’s push are also concerned about the risk of giving Pyongyang a symbolic “end of war” declaration without getting anything concrete in return from Kim.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met Suh in Seoul on Wednesday and in a brief address later, renewed Washington’s commitment to South Korea’s defense.
On Thursday, Austin and U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will attend annual military talks with South Korea. The discussions are expected to cover an update to operational planning for a potential conflict with North Korea.
“It’s needed, given the circumstances and new capabilities that the alliances possess,” one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We do this all the time.”

North Korea Decries AUKUS for Being U.S. ‘Tool’ Threatens Nuclear War

North Korea has reportedly criticized the new tripartite security partnership, calling it a U.S. “instrument of war” that poses a “serious threat” to world peace, Yonhap reported, citing a statement posted on the DPRK Foreign Ministry’s website.
AUKUS was said to “bring dark clouds of nuclear war to the world”.
“(The concerns) come from the fact that the security platform plans to transfer to Australia the technologies to build a nuclear-powered submarine from the U.S. which is the world’s largest country of war and invasion,” the statement reads.