South Korea's nuclear envoy Lim Sung-Nam left Sunday for Vienna for talks on ways to revive stalled negotiations on North Korea's nuclear disarmament.
Lim is to meet Glyn Davies, new US special representative for North Korea policy, during his two-day trip to Vienna, the foreign ministry said.
It will be Lim's first meeting with Davies, who has yet to step down from his current post as US ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Lim also plans to meet IAEA director general Yukiya Amano.
Following his trip to Vienna the South's envoy will fly to the Indonesian resort island of Bali where South Korea, Japan and the US will seek to hold three-way talks on North Korea during the East Asia Summit.
After a second round of talks in Geneva last month, Pyongyang and Washington reported some progress, but US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said later that there had been no breakthrough.
Six-party negotiations involving the US, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia have been at a standstill since the last session in December 2008.
The North formally quit the six-party forum in April 2009, a month before staging its second atomic weapons test.
It has since repeatedly said it wants to come back to the negotiations without preconditions, but Washington and its allies say Pyongyang must first take steps to show its sincerity.
