Stick and Carrot: North Korea Fires 2 Missiles, Calls for Talks with US

By Staff- Agencies

Hours after Pyongyang said it is willing to hold working-level talks with the United States in late September, South Korean military accused North Korea on Tuesday of firing two "unidentified projectiles" toward the sea.

No further details were immediately available but these were the latest to be fired since July. Previous launches have been identified as short-range missiles.

The nuclear-armed state offered to resume talks later this month after a standstill in the denuclearization process following the collapse of a February summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

The pair agreed to restart working-level dialogue during an impromptu meeting at the Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea in June, but those talks have yet to begin.

"We are willing to sit face-to-face with the US around late September at a time and place that we can agree on," Choe Son Hui, the North's vice foreign minister, said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Choe's comment followed his warning in late August that the North's "expectations of dialogue with the US are gradually disappearing", after Pyongyang conducted a series of weapons tests to protest joint US-South Korean military exercises.