The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday strongly condemned North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launches and expressed serious concerns that the launches were conducted in “flagrant disregard” of repeated condemnations by the U.N. body.
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Which may help explain the surprisingly quick condemnation by the Security Council.
The leaders of the three countries agreed in Seoul in November a year ago to resume their rotation of annual trilateral talks, which were shelved in 2013 and 2014 while Japan-China ties were strained over the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.
Park Geun-Hye showed his full support for U.S.’ plan to impose a set of sanctions for North Korea’s most recent actions.
China, North Korea’s northern neighbor and closest ally, has always been resistant to tough action against the Kim regime.
“Thus, South Korea and the United States place considerable importance on this issue and will continue to closely discuss and cooperate on it”.
North Korea had launched an upgraded Taepodong-2 missile in December 2012, which is said to have a range of 10,000 kilometers – the longest for a North Korean missile – and could reach the US mainland.
In the statement, the Council members said they further regretted that the DPRK is diverting resources to the pursuit of ballistic missiles while it citizens have great unmet needs.
“With each test, each violation of UN Security Council resolutions – and there have been 22 of them so far this year – the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) demonstrates further advancement of its ballistic program”, U.S. envoy Samantha Power said.
The last UNSC press statement after a North Korean missile launch was issued late last month, after running into delays over Beijing’s demand that it include a line saying the missile launches should not be used as an excuse to deploy new anti-ballistic missile shields in the region. President Barack Obama was to head to Laos on Monday evening.
The latest firing won’t help the push by Xi to get Park to scrap the planned deployment of a powerful USA anti-missile system in the South.
“The ICAO has sent a letter of warning to North Korea under the name of the chairman of its board”, Cho June-hyuck, spokesman at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a regular briefing.
Park also said “considering that China’s role is important in effectively implementing sanctions against the North and resolving its nuclear problem, South Korea and the US agreed to continue communication with China through various channels”.
That flew 500 kilometres towards Japan, far exceeding the range of the country’s previous sub-launched missiles.
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From 2006 to March 2016, the Security Council adopted five resolutions, including punitive measures such as imposing economic sanctions against North Korea, four of which were related to nuclear testing. Submarine-based missiles are harder to detect before launch than land-based ones like Rodongs. It called them “grave violations” of a ban on all ballistic missile activity.
