STEPHEN BIEGUN VISITS SEOUL

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U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun is visiting Korea for three-days from Tuesday. He is also set to visit Japan afterwards. The U.S. State Department says Biegun will discuss issues related to the Seoul-Washington alliance and North Korea's complete denuclearization.

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​​The U.S. State Department announced, its deputy secretary, Stephen Biegun will visit South Korea and Japan between July 7th and the 11th. He is to arrive in Seoul on Tuesday afternoon for a three-day stay. The official will discuss two major issues -- close cooperation between allies and North Korea's final and fully verifiable denuclearization. This is apparently the reason why the U.S. State Department also mentioned Biegun's title of "special representative for North Korea" in its announcement. When the senior White House official visited Seoul in December as a deputy secretary nominee, he tried to contact North Korean officials but a meeting did not happen. Although the possibility of talks with the regime this time cannot be ruled out, it's still unclear if the meeting will take place. As Stephen Biegun is currently the deputy secretary of the State Department. His North Korean counterpart should be First Vice foreign minister Choe Son-hui. However, Choe drew a line last week by saying she refuses to meet with American officials prior to the U.S. presidential election. According to South Korea's foreign Ministry, during his stay, Biegun is to meet with Seoul's top diplomat, First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Se-young, and Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs Lee Do-hoon. The officials will likely hold broad discussions on the next step to be taken by the allies' working-level group tasked with finding ways to implement North Korea sanctions.