Senior U.S., Japanese and South Korean officials met Monday to plan for “the irreversible denuclearization of North Korea,” the State Department said.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has pressed ahead with his regime’s nuclear weapons program, despite years of international pressure. In the final year of the Obama administration, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declared efforts to force North Korea to surrender nuclear weapons “a lost cause” — a comment rejected by the State Department at the time.
The diplomats pledged Trump to the same goal of denuclearization. “The officials discussed cooperative efforts to ensure that all countries fully and effectively implement their obligations under UN Security Council Resolutions 2270 and 2321, which imposed robust and comprehensive sanctions on North Korea to inhibit its campaign to develop operational nuclear and missile capabilities,” they said in a joint statement. “The officials considered other possible measures under national authorities, including means to restrict further the revenue sources for North Korea’s weapons programs, particularly illicit activities.”
North Korea has increased the pace of testing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, driving then-President Barack Obama’s team to promise to deploy a missile defense battery to South Korea. China and Russia oppose that plan vehemently, but they allowed a new round of sanctions on North Korea to pass through the United Nations Security Council last year.
“[China] plays an outside role in terms of the impact of these sanctions; or, rather, the impact they can have implementing these sanctions,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in December.
That comment acknowledged the concern that China, long-regarded by the United States as an enabler of the North Korean regime, might circumvent some of the sanctions. But a recent outburst against China by North Korean state media suggests that China’s implementation of the sanctions is more complete than in past years.
“This country, styling itself a big power, is dancing to the tune of the U.S. while defending its mean behavior with such excuses that it was meant not to have a negative impact on the living of the people in the DPRK but to check its nuclear program,” a Korean Central News Agency column said.
