President Lee Myung-bak is to meet with China's foreign minister Friday, an official said, amid tensions over Beijing's handling of North Korean defectors and heightened prospects of resuming six-party talks following the latest nuclear deal between Pyongyang and Washington.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi is scheduled to arrive in Seoul for talks with his South Korean counterpart Kim Sung-hwan. Yang is also scheduled to pay a visit to Lee later in the day, a presidential official said.
The visit comes two days after the U.S. and the North announced a deal under which Pyongyang promised to temporarily halt its uranium enrichment program, accept U.N. inspectors and put a moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests in exchange for food aid.
The deal has brightened the prospects of restarting the six-party nuclear talks that have been stalled since the last session in late 2008. The negotiations bring together the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the U.S.
South Korea and China have also showed signs of tensions in recent weeks over Beijing's forced repatriation of a group of North Korean defectors to their impoverished communist homeland where they could face harsh punishment and even execution.
China is the only major ally of North Korea and provides diplomatic support and economic assistance to the impoverished nation. Beijing usually repatriates defectors from North Korea, seeing them as economic migrants, not refugees. (Yonhap)