“The entire global community needs to implement these sanctions fully and hold North Korea accountable”, Obama said on the sidelines of a summit of southeast Asian leaders in his last presidential trip to the continent.
Advertisement
It is believed that the North fired the Rodong missile as the bilateral talks between South Korean President Park Geun-Hye and Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up.
Japanese envoy Koro Bessho said that “all member states” had condemned the launches during the talks as violating United Nations resolutions, which bar North Korea from any use of ballistic missile technology.
Park said a string of nuclear tests and continued missile launches by North Korea were threatening the security of the Korean Peninsula.
Even as Obama promised a tougher stance, he did not close off the possibility for dialogue with North Korea, if it were to change course.
But despite the global chorus of disapproval and tough sanctions, Pyongyang is unrepentant – continuing to ignore the worldwide community’s calls for a halt to its weapons programme.
“There were very strong and numerous voices in the room for doing more and so without getting ahead of the council we are also interested in increasing the consequences after this pattern of using these launches to advance the capabilities of the programme”, she added.
The U.N. Security Council in late August strongly condemned four North Korean ballistic missile launches in July and August.
The U.S. has significantly increased pressure on Pyongyang over its human rights record, imposing first-ever sanctions on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for his roles in the country’s human rights abuses.
The Nodong-1 missile has a maximum range of 1,300-1,500 kilometers, whereas the range of the intermediate-range Nodong-B is estimated at 2,500-4,000 kilometers. Obama said they were “provocative”. “They’re a violation of North Korea’s obligations internationally”.
They landed in the Sea of Japan 125 to 155 miles west of Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s main islands, the Japanese Defense Ministry said.
North Korea launched the missiles while China was hosting the Group of 20 economic summit, she said.
Pyongyang has lately intensified strategic armaments tests: on August 24, a ballistic missile was sacked from a submarine in the presence of President Kim Jong-un.
North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes threatens the USA and its allies Japan and the Republic of Korea.
Advertisement
In response, the country showed off its latest high-tech weaponry at the Defense Expo Korea 2016 exhibition organised by the South Korean government in Seoul.
