The North began moving disassembled parts of its main nuclear reactor back to the plutonium-producing facility this week, putting into action a threat it would restore atomic facilities that had been partially disabled under a disarmament pact, South Korea said Wednesday.

Pyongyang says that the United States has not held up its end of their disarmament deal - a promise to remove North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Washington says it will take the North off the list only after it complies with a disarmament requirement.

On Friday, South Korea's chief nuclear negotiator, Kim Sook, headed to Beijing for talks.

"I'm going to meet my counterparts from the United States, China and Japan to establish a joint view of the current situation and discuss ways to deal with it," Kim told reporters. "I hope the impasse will be broken at an early date and North Korea will resume" disarmament steps, he said.

The envoys were gathering in Beijing because China has hosted six-nation North Korea nuclear talks that also involve Russia.

Kim said he has no information on whether North Korea's nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye Gwan, would be in the Chinese capital. The U.S. and North Korean negotiators have sometimes met in Beijing in the past when their negotiations were deadlocked.

The United States has played down the latest North Korean move, saying Pyongyang just moved some equipment out of storage and it has not yet started to "reconstruct, reintegrate this equipment back into the facility."

South Korean envoy Kim said he did not have information on whether Pyongyang had done anything more to undo its disarmament steps, beyond moving equipment out of storage and placing it near the atomic reactor at its Yongbyon plant.

The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency has said it would take some time for North Korea to restore the facilities to an operational state because the country had already removed "essential" equipment from them.

South Korean and U.S. officials have said it would take at least a year for North Korea to restart the facilities once they are completely disabled.

The North conducted an underground nuclear test blast in October 2006. It later agreed with the U.S. and four other countries to disable the Yongbyon plant in exchange for aid and diplomatic concessions. Work began in November last year.

There was major progress in June after North Korea submitted the long-delayed accounting of its nuclear activities and destroyed its nuclear cooling tower in a show of commitment to denuclearization.

The U.S. then announced it would take North Korea off the terrorism blacklist, a coveted goal of the North's cash-strapped regime, but said it must first agree to a verification plan.

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