Anchor: The Moon Jae-in administration is keeping a close watch on the U.S. presidential election, where Democratic candidate Joe Biden currently leads President Donald Trump 264 to 214. The country's top security and diplomatic officials emphasized that the administration is prepared to cooperate on North Korea and pending alliance issues with whichever side wins.
Choi You Sun reports.

Report: With the U.S. presidential election still up in the air, South Korean officials say they are ready to work with whichever administration comes in and that Seoul's consistent goal is the denuclearization of North Korea. 

Attending a parliamentary foreign affairs committee meeting on Thursday, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha stressed that it's still too early to say for sure which side has won the U.S. presidential election.

The minister added that regardless of the outcome, Seoul is preparing to continue coordinating and consulting with Washington on foreign policy issues.

Kang said her ministry has set up a task force to monitor the election and to come up with various scenarios depending on the outcome, adding that Seoul has established communication channels with both the Trump and Biden camps.

She disagreed with concerns that progress in Pyongyang-Washington relations could retrogress if Biden is elected as he is expected to abandon Trump's "top-down" approach. 

She said that the Biden camp shares the view that denuclearization and the establishment of peace must be achieved through coordination between the allies.

National Security Adviser Suh Hoon, who attended a parliamentary audit on Wednesday, also said that Seoul is ready to cooperate with any U.S. administration under the framework of the alliance, in working towards denuclearization and the establishment of a peace regime.

He said that while the groundwork for coordination has been achieved with the Trump administration, Seoul also has experience in cooperating with the Democrats. 

President Moon Jae-in, meanwhile, will be briefed on what was discussed at a meeting of the National Security Council on Thursday afternoon, where the election and the impact of each outcome are widely expected to top the agenda.
Choi You Sun, KBS World Radio News.