South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday ordered his top security officials to visit China and Japan to explain the outcome of their visit to North Korea this week, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said.
Chung Eui-yong, Moon's top security adviser, will travel to China this week to personally explain the outcome of his trip to Pyongyang on Wednesday.
"Chung is scheduled to meet with Yang Jiechi (in Beijing) on Saturday," Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told a press briefing. Yang is a ranking member of China's communist party who is in charge of foreign affairs.
Suh Hoon, director of the National Intelligence Service, will visit Japan for a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday, the Cheong Wa Dae spokesman added.
Suh too visited Pyongyang as part of a five-member delegation that also included Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-sung.
During their one-day trip to the communist North, the South Korean officials met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who they said clearly reaffirmed his commitment to the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Chung's scheduled trip to Beijing comes after he held telephone talks with his U.S. counterpart John Bolton to deliver a direct message from the North Korean leader to the U.S.
Chung refused to disclose details of the message, but the Cheong Wa Dae spokesman earlier expressed hope that the U.S. would soon take affirmative measures to restart its stalled dialogue with North Korea on ending the latter's nuclear ambitions.
Cheong Wa Dae said Chung was also expected to hold a telephone conversation with his Russian counterparts to explain the outcome of his latest trip to Pyongyang.
Both Chung and Suh visited the North in March for a meeting with the North Korean leader that later led to the historic summit between the leaders of the divided Koreas.
Moon is set to travel to Pyongyang from Sept. 18-20 for what would be his third bilateral summit with Kim. The second Moon-Kim summit was held May 26 in the border village of Panmunjom, also the venue of their first-ever summit on April 27. (Yonhap)