North Korea tests missile as Tillerson calls for sanctions

Bloomberg

North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile just hours after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson mounted an effort at the United Nations to rally pressure against Kim Jong Un’s regime.
The missile was fired at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday local time from northeast of Pyongyang and appears to have failed, according to a text message from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. Pacific Command said it didn’t leave North Korean territory and posed no threat to North America. It was likely a medium-range KN-17 ballistic missile and broke up minutes after launch, the Associated Press reported, citing an unidentified U.S. official.
In a tweet shortly after the launch, President Donald Trump referenced a growing divergence between North Korea and its main ally China: “North Korea disrespected the wishes of China & its highly respected President when it launched, though unsuccessfully, a missile today. Bad!” Trump has praised Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s actions on North Korea since the two leaders met in Florida earlier this month.
Trump has stepped up pressure on North Korea to prevent it from obtaining the capability to hit North America with a nuclear weapon. He has threatened to act unilaterally if China fails to do more to curb its neighbor’s activities.
China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately reply to phone and email messages on Saturday seeking comment on the test-firing.
Kim’s regime has test-fired ballistic missiles six times this year, including a failed test earlier this month following a high-profile military parade through Pyongyang. He’s launched dozens of projectiles and conducted three nuclear tests since coming to power after his father’s death in 2011, and claimed in January to be almost ready to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile that would threaten the continental US. Tillerson told Fox News earlier this week that China had warned Kim’s regime it would impose further sanctions if it conducted a sixth nuclear test. China banned coal imports from North Korea this year and the Global Times, a nationalist newspaper affiliated with Communist Party, warned earlier this month that
another nuclear test might prompt oil curbs.
“The Security Council is mobilized,” Francois Delattre, France’s ambassador to the UN, said in reaction to news of the North Korean missile launch hours after the Security Council met to discuss the country. “The Security Council has to assume its responsibilities to be very firm in terms of the implementation of existing sanctions, in terms of adopting new sanctions if necessary, and tightening the regime of sanctions.”
At the UN on Friday, Tillerson called on other nations to cut diplomatic and economic ties with North Korea. He spelled out a renewed US effort to compel the country’s regime to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs after decades of defiance.
Speaking before the United Nations Security Council for the first time as the top US diplomat, Tillerson proposed three ways to pressure North Korea: UN member states should “fully implement” existing sanctions against North Korea, downgrade or suspend diplomatic ties with the country and increase its financial isolation with new and tighter sanctions.
“North Korea exploits its diplomatic privileges to fund its illicit nuclear and missile technology programs, and constraining its diplomatic activity will cut off the flow of needed resources,” Tillerson said. Normal ties with the country “are simply not acceptable,” he added, urging economic sanctions against nations that do business with North Korea.
The Security Council meeting capped a flurry of U.S. activity this week aimed at injecting urgency into resolving the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, which are banned under UN resolutions. Trump has said he’s fed up with decades of failure by U.S. presidents from both parties to stop the program. He’s called on China to rein in its neighbor and sent an aircraft carrier battle group and nuclear submarine to the
region.

Japan, Philippines urge US, North Korea to avoid brink of war

Bloomberg

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte joined China in pleading with the leaders of North Korea and the US to tone down their nuclear brinksmanship, even as he agreed with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that negotiations to end the standoff would be useless.
“We have to caution everybody including those who’d give the advice to the two players because you have nuclear warheads to just show restraint,” Duterte said on Saturday after wrapping up a meeting of leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila.
Abe, in London, said talks with North Korea shouldn’t be tried while the communist nation continues its “provocative acts.” He spoke as China’s official news agency, Xinhua, urged President Donald Trump to “tread cautiously” with the U.S. and North Korea locked in a “tit-for-tat” vicious cycle. Duterte compared the standoff to two countries playing with toys “and those toys are not to entertain.”