North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s latest agreement with South Korean President Moon Jae-in shouldn’t lead to any sanctions relief, a top Republican lawmaker urged Wednesday.
“Maximum pressure campaign should proceed,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce tweeted.
Kim agreed to close down a missile test site at the conclusion of a summit in Pyongyang with Moon, who has made a series of overtures to his northern counterpart. That deal also held out the prospect of additional steps, if President Trump’s administration offers concessions to the North Koreans. Royce, a California Republican, is not impressed.
“North Korea wants concessions from the U.S. for steps far short of denuclearization,” he wrote in the tweet. “Glad the [administration] has made no commitments.”
Moon wants the United States to resume negotiations with Kim, though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently canceled a planned trip to North Korea.
“Based on the outcome of the summit this time, I expect the North-U.S. negotiations to somewhat speed up, and we also hope a North Korea-U.S. summit will be held at an early date,” the South Korean president’s national security adviser Chung Eui-yong was quoted saying by Yonhap News.
[Opinion: South Korea’s new deal with North Korea won’t stop Kim from getting the nuclear weapons he wants]
Some Western experts have taken a dim view of North Korean gestures regarding missile test sites, given that Kim has proven that he already has intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.
“It’s true that they have a little bit more technical things to do to truly prove that they perfected their nuclear arsenal, like successful reentry capability,” Sue Mi Terry, a former senior intelligence official who is now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner in May. “But they could say, ‘you know what, we don’t need to push it, we can just end it here and call it good, we’ve done it.’ ”
Terry, speaking before Trump’s Singapore summit with Kim in June, predicted that the U.S. would struggle to maintain economic pressure on the regime. “It’s already eroding, sanctions implementation,” she said. “So, North Korea is already much better off than where they were in November and December.”
China applauded the latest agreement between Kim and Moon. “We hope that [North Korea] and [South Korea] can continue to implement the consensus in relevant declarations, strive to promote their interactions and cooperation and play a positive role in politically resolving the Korean Peninsula issue and achieving the long-standing peace of the region,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters during a Wednesday briefing.
[Related: Trump touts accomplishments of North, South Korea summit]
But Royce and other lawmakers believe the administration needs to intensify the pressure for China to implement international sanctions on North Korea.
“We’re going to do everything in our power to hold this administration accountable, but we’re also going to put the pressure on China and Russia,” Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee’s Asia-Pacific panel, told the Washington Examiner in July. “I personally feel Russia and China love the distraction for the United States to be involved in this because it allows [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to expand over there in the Baltic nations and allows China to keep expanding around the world.”
