While attending a United Nations session, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha appealed for the international community's support to speed up the nascent process of denuclearizing North Korea, her ministry said Friday.
The Security Council foreign ministers meeting on North Korea was held in New York on Thursday (local time), chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The meeting came amid talk of a second U.S.-North Korea summit and a rift among regional powers over the level of sanctions to impose on the communist nation that is armed with nuclear bombs and long-range missiles.
Kang discussed progress in efforts to rid the North of its nuclear arsenal, including the latest inter-Korean summit talks.
She "requested the international community's support for more concrete accomplishments through U.S.-North Korea negotiations down the road," the ministry said in a press release.
She cited a set of Pyongyang's goodwill gestures, such as the shutdown of a nuclear test site in Punggye-ri and plan for the removal of a major missile-testing facility.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un also committed to denuclearization in person during a press conference after his Pyongyang meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in last week.
In the U.N. meeting, China and Russia argued that sanctions on the North should be eased in consideration of the recent "positive development."
But the U.S. stressed the need to enforce the sanctions until the "final, fully verified denuclearization." (Yonhap)