Tillerson set to arrive in Tokyo on his first tour of East Asian countries

Washington’s top diplomat arrived in Tokyo on Wednesday to begin his first tour of Asian capitals under the shadow of North Korea’s nuclear posturing.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has promised to take a tough line on Kim Jong- un’s isolated regime as he talks to allies Japan and South Korea and to rival great power China.

The former oilman will also talk commerce, after President Donald Trump’s belligerent campaign rhetoric raised the specter of a trade war between the US and China.

But US officials confirmed North Korea’s provocative behavior would be “front and center” as Tillerson meets Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday.

After Tokyo, he will be off to Seoul, a city already within range of North Korea’s artillery and rocket batteries, for talks with the acting leader after a corruption scandal saw President Park Geun- hye ousted last week.

And then at the weekend, there will be his much anticipated trip to Beijing, amid reports that Tillerson will seek to finalize plans for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with Trump in April.

Tillerson has warned that US invest- ments in China would bear the brunt of any trade war, saying, “I believe whatever differences we have, we can still sit down and talk to each other and work together to find solutions.”

But Tillerson will also have to broach the topic of North Korea’s progress toward building an intercontinental ballistic missile that would be able to threaten US mainland cities or bases in the Pacific.

“He’s going to have an opportunity at every stop to talk about next steps or what we do now, with respect to North Korea,” acting US Department of State spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.

“I mean, it’s obviously the looming challenge over our relations and, frankly, the security of the Korean Peninsula,” the spokesman added in a news briefing before Tillerson left Washington.

Washington insists Terminal High Altitude Area Defense is a defensive system deployed to protect the South and US bases from North Korean missiles.

“[ However,] the THAAD deployment is a wrong choice. It will probably make South Korea less secure,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during the two sessions on March 8.