A U.S. envoy will visit North Korea on Dec. 8 to try to bring it back to nuclear disarmament talks, President Barack Obama said Nov. 19, urging Pyongyang to end provocations and negotiate seriously.

Stephen Bosworth AP PHOTO

"We will be sending Ambassador (Stephen) Bosworth to North Korea on Dec. 8 to engage in direct talks with the North Koreans," Obama said at a joint news conference in Seoul with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on the last stop of his debut Asian tour.

Bosworth's mission is to bring the North back to the six-party nuclear disarmament talks that it quit in April, a month before staging a second atomic weapons test.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il said last month his country is ready to return to the six-nation talks, but only if the bilateral discussions with the United States are satisfactory.

The six-nation talks group the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, and began more than six years ago.