Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, who is set to meet with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun on Friday, earlier urged North Korea to "engage constructively with regional countries and keep dialogue channels open."
According to Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday, Balakrishnan made the remarks during a meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui in Pyongyang on Thursday. The ministry also said Balakrishnan invited Choe to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) scheduled to be held in Manila, the Philippines, in July.
The ARF is the only regional multilateral security consultative body in which North Korea participates, and it has served as an occasion where North Korean foreign ministers and their counterparts from South Korea, the United States, and Japan could come face-to-face. However, North Korea's foreign minister has been absent from the forum every year from 2019 through last year.
Balakrishnan earlier visited Beijing from Monday to Wednesday, where he held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Although neither China nor Singapore mentioned North Korea or the Korean Peninsula in their press releases on the meeting, the talks are presumed to have covered Korean Peninsula issues, given that they took place immediately before the Pyongyang trip.
Through Balakrishnan's visit to Seoul following his trips to China and North Korea, South Korea is expected to receive detailed information on North Korea's diplomatic activities and other developments. Balakrishnan is scheduled to hold a Korea-Singapore foreign ministers' meeting with Cho on Friday. It is the first visit to South Korea by a Singaporean foreign minister in more than 20 years.
