The Senate is scheduled to vote this week on legislation to increase sanctions against North Korea following a missile launch over the weekend.
The North Korea Sanctions Enforce Act, a bill from Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., passed the House last month and is scheduled for a vote in the full Senate this week after being approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to a release from Royce’s office.
“As North Korea works to build a nuclear arsenal capable of hitting the United States it is clear the Obama administration’s policy of ‘strategic patience’ has failed,” Royce said in a statement. “This latest aggression underscores the importance of enacting my legislation to strengthen targeted sanctions against this brutal regime.”
The U.S. military on Saturday night detected a North Korean missile launch into space, according to a release from U.S. Strategic Command. The missile, launched to the south over the Yellow Sea, did not pose any threat to North America, the statement said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on Sunday said the test showed the need for further sanctions.
“North Korea has defied the international community once again by launching a long-range missile in violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions,” the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said in a statement. “While North Korea is claiming this was a satellite launch, we must not be fooled: the only difference between a rocket carrying a satellite and nuclear warhead is the payload.”
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the president should consider the recent test in his budget request and urged the administration to fully fund the military to face the broad array of threats it faces.
“Once again, we are reminded that America faces dangers beyond ISIS, Russia and Iran. The president’s reluctance to face these dangers with resolve, much less a strategy, only allows them to proliferate. Seven years of underfunding for U.S. missile defense have given our adversaries uncontested opportunity to advance their capabilities,” Thornberry said.
The missile launch also prompted the U.S. and South Korea to begin formal talks to deploy a Lockheed Martin Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, to the region as soon as possible, Reuters reported.
McCain called deploying a missile defense system to the Korean Peninsula a “critical step to providing a further layer of defense against North Korean provocations.”
South Korea had previously been hesitant to talk with the U.S. about the possibility of basing a THAAD system in the region due to objections by China, its biggest trading partner, according to the Reuters report.
The missile defense system can intercept short- to medium-range ballistic missiles inside or just outside the Earth’s atmosphere, according to the Missile Defense Agency. The system is launched from a truck-mounted system.
