China's chief envoy to six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament will visit South Korea next week for talks, the foreign ministry said Friday.
Wu Dawei will meet his counterpart Wi Sung-Lac on Tuesday and Foreign Minister Kim Sung-Hwan on Wednesday, the ministry said in a statement.
"The two sides will review recent inter-Korean ties and the North Korean nuclear issue and exchange views on ways to deal with them," it said.
Diplomatic efforts are resuming after a year of high cross-border military tensions.
Wi visited Washington last week and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came to Seoul last weekend to coordinate the next move on the communist North.
Former US president Jimmy Carter, an advocate of reaching out to Pyongyang, is expected to visit the North next week with fellow elder statesmen.
A US-North Korean agreement on dismantling the North's nuclear programme broke down in 2002 and a subsequent six-nation deal reached in 2005 has also collapsed.
In November the North disclosed an apparently functional uranium enrichment plant, giving it a potential second way to make atomic bombs — in addition to its plutonium programme — although it says the programme is peaceful.
Efforts by Washington and Seoul in February to address the uranium programme at the UN Security Council failed amid opposition from Beijing, Pyongyang's strong ally.
Tensions have been high on the peninsula since the North's alleged sinking of a South Korean warship in March 2010. Last November it shelled a South Korean island, killing four people.
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