South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun will travel to China this week to meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Yonhap News Agency reported on Sunday.

During this visit, he is expected to raise the issue of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s potential participation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea.

The visit is the first by the minister since he was assigned back in June. 

Trump-Kim meeting?

US President Donald Trump is expected to visit South Korea from October 31 for the APEC summit in Gyeongju, knowing that he told South Korean President Lee Jae Myung last month that he wanted to meet DPRK leader Kim Jong Un before the end of the year.

Lee’s office said he invited Trump to attend the APEC meeting and proposed that he seek a meeting with Kim during his trip to Asia.

South Korea urges dialogue with Kim

Chinese President Xi this month appeared alongside Kim Jong Un at a military parade and later held their first meeting in six years, and Beijing’s official account of the talks notably omitted any mention of “denuclearisation” of the Korean Peninsula, which some analysts viewed as a significant concession to Kim.

South Korea has called on Beijing to take a constructive role in encouraging Pyongyang to engage in dialogue over its nuclear program.

This comes amid heightened tensions between the DPRK and its southern neighbor following joint drills by the US, South Korea, and Japan.

Kim Yo Jong, Deputy Director of the Workers' Party of Korea’s Publicity and Information Department, condemned the planned joint military drills by the United States, South Korea, and Japan as a “reckless show of strength” that would ultimately harm the allies, state media reported Sunday.

The trilateral exercises, set to run from Monday to Friday near South Korea’s Jeju Island, will involve naval, air, and missile-defense operations, while Washington and Seoul, which hosts about 28,500 US troops, will carry out a tabletop drill aimed at integrating their military assets.

“The reckless show of strength made by them in real action in the vicinity of the DPRK, which is the wrong place, will inevitably bring bad results to themselves,” she stressed in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).