The Biden administration’s North Korea policy “lacks novelty” and “substantive changes,” a retired senior Chinese official told a forum in Seoul on Tuesday, despite a recently finished policy review process meant to differentiate fresh U.S. efforts from the past.

Ning Fukui, China’s former ambassador to South Korea and a former deputy special representative for Korean Peninsula affairs, said a key problem was that the U.S. continues to show little regard for North Korean actions toward denuclearization since the summits of 2018-19.