"South Korea expects North Korea to quickly restore stability and react positively to dialogue," Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik said in a meeting with 21 Seoul-stationed ambassadors of the European Union.
South Korea has been seeking to have dialogue with North Korea, especially since the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il last month, to try to encourage the communist country to move in the right direction.
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The latest comment comes as North Korea denounced South Korean President Lee Myung-bak for driving inter-Korean ties to their worst level and disrupting efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
"In case the chance of resuming the six-nation talks disappears, Lee Myung-bak's government will be chiefly blamed for it," the Disarmament and Peace Institute of North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the country's Korean Central News Agency.
In 2009, North Korea quit the talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, but it has since called for a quick resumption of the talks without any preconditions.
South Korea and the U.S have insisted that North Korea halt its uranium enrichment to show its sincerity toward denuclearization before reviving the disarmament-for-aid talks.
The talks, which involve the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, were last held in Beijing in late 2008.
The European Union vowed to engage with South Korea in seeking solutions to issues essential to global and regional security, including nonproliferation and human rights.
"The European Union is very much committed to supporting efforts aimed at achieving a nuclear free Korean Peninsula, the improvement of human rights in the (North) and the positive development of inter-Korean relations," said EU ambassador Tomasz Kozlowski.
entropy@yna.co.kr
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