Unification minister floats 4-way peace talks involving 2 Koreas, US, China

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young on Thursday proposed a four-way dialogue involving South Korea, North Korea, the United States and China to establish a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.

Chung made the appeal in his special address at the opening ceremony of the 11th Ulaanbaatar Dialogue in Mongolia, a platform to discuss security and peace cooperation in Northeast Asia.

He stressed the need for the two Koreas to "rebuild the inter-Korean trust and restore peace," proposing that the four-party talks expand over time to include Mongolia, Japan and Russia. "If those three fronts — rebuilding inter-Korean trust, institutionalizing a peace regime and advancing multilateral dialogue in Northeast Asia — move forward all together, we can build a new peaceful order across the region," he said.

Chung also pointed to the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI), an intergovernmental mechanism aimed at turning the Tumen River Basin to a regional hub, as a vehicle for his vision.

He cited Arctic sea route cooperation and a high-speed rail link between Seoul and Beijing as potential early projects