South Korean President Moon Jae-in Monday talked with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump over phone on the nuclear and missile programs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Moon said the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue should be resolved in a peaceful, diplomatic manner, based on close cooperation between South Korea and the United States, Moon's spokesman Park Soo-hyun told a press briefing.
The phone talks lasted for 56 minutes, according to the presidential Blue House.
The South Korean leader said it can never be tolerated that any more horrors of war happen on the Korean Peninsula.
The peninsula is technically in a state of war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in armistice, not a peace treaty.
On July 28, the DPRK test-launched what it called an intercontinental ballistic missile, which flew about 1,000 km and was lofted as high as over 3,700 km. It showed an advanced technology compared with the one, launched on July 4, that traveled 933 km at a maximum altitude of 2,802 km.
During the dialogue, Moon urged joint efforts to encourage Pyongyang to come to the dialogue table for dismantlement of the DPRK's nuclear program by using heavy pressure and sanctions.
The UN Security Council on Saturday unanimously adopted new sanctions on the DPRK over its recent ballistic missile test-launches. It bans the exports of seafood and minerals such as coal, iron, iron ore, lead and lead ore.
The South Korean president, who took office on May 10, said it needed to show Pyongyang that a door for dialogue would be open when the DPRK makes a right choice of giving up its nuclear program.
Top diplomats of South Korea and the DPRK had a brief encounter on Sunday on the sidelines of a series of foreign ministers meetings on East Asian cooperation, Yonhap news agency reported Monday.
An unnamed South Korean foreign ministry official was quoted as saying that South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha briefly encountered and exchanged opinions with her DPRK counterpart Ri Yong-ho at a reception dinner of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Manila, the Philippines.
It marked the first time since the new South Korean government was launched on May 10 that the foreign ministers of the two sides met, though briefly.
During the encounter, Kang told Ri that South Korea anticipated rapid response to Seoul's dialogue overtures, which Pyongyang has been mum about.
The top DPRK diplomat told the South Korean foreign minister that the dialogue overtures lacked sincerity as South Korea put pressures on the DPRK in cooperation with the United States.
