Top South Korean and Japanese diplomats agreed Monday to step up joint efforts to persuade North Korea not to fire a long-range missile, officials here.
In their telephone conversation, Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan and his counterpart Hirofumi Nakasone shared the view that North Korea's rocket launch, which Pyongyang claims is aimed at sending a communications satellite into orbit, would violate the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, officials added.
The resolution, adopted in 2006 after the North's missile and nuclear tests that year, bans the Communist country from engaging in any activity related to
a ballistic missile launch.
The Yu-Nakasone talks were to exchange the results of their separate discussions with their U.S. and Chinese counterparts last week, according
to South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young.