South Korea’s minister of unification urged Beijing to take on a “constructive” role in establishing peace on the Korean peninsula during a meeting with the Chinese ambassador on Wednesday.

“Now, inter-Korean relations have been in a stalemate for quite a long time but we believe that under any circumstances dialogue should continue and therefore our government wants to make much efforts to put inter-Korean dialogue back on track,” Lee In-young, the country’s new minister of unification, reportedly said on Wednesday.

Lee met with Xing Haiming at his office in Seoul, where the two discussed ways to cooperate on diplomacy with