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Sanctions on North Korea: The Devil is in China’s Follow-Through

If there was one way to emphasize the grave problem of nuclear security to the international community, South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s recent visit to Washington summed up the issue pretty well. On the fringes of the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS), Park met with President Barack Obama and the leaders of Japan and China to discuss the region’s response to the present and palpable threat of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Park’s participation in the NSS and conversations with her regional neighbors on dealing with Pyongyang’s ever-present nuclear threat symbolically underscored the exigency of finding a unified strategy to deal with nuclear threats.

The outcome of the meetings? At the theoretical, symbolic level, all parties endorsed South Korea’s position on the perennial problem of North Korea’s nuclear provocations, rebuked Pyongyang’s course of action in recent months – its  January hydrogen bomb test, followed by several missile launches – and expressed support for UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2270 imposing sanctions against the Kim regime. Both President Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for the global community to faithfully implement the resolution and reaffirmed bilateral and three-way cooperation on the common North Korean threat. Washington maintained its security commitment guarantee on the Peninsula and backed Seoul’s efforts to deter Pyongyang’s bad behavior. Tokyo, too, put aside longstanding territorial and historical disagreements with Seoul to promote concrete security and defense cooperation among the three nations.

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