US warns of ‘toughest ever’ sanctions
JAPAN/UNITED STATES: US Vice-president Mike Pence has vowed that the toughest ever sanctions against North Korea will be unveiled within days, as he adopts a hardline stance ahead of the Winter Olympics.
‘‘We will continue to isolate North Korea until it abandons its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes once and for all,’’ Pence said yesterday in Japan before heading to Pyeongchang in South Korea to lead the US delegation at the games’ opening ceremony tomorrow.
US officials said the sanctions would be implemented before the end of the games, which around 200 North Korean athletes and officials are attending in a show of diplomacy.
The two Koreas will march under a united flag during the opening ceremony, and will later field a joint team for the women’s ice hockey.
Pence warned that he would not allow North Korea to ‘‘hijack’’ the games with its state propaganda, and urged the international community not to forget its chequered history.
He pointed out that the two nations had marched under the same banner before, only to see ‘‘North Korea continue its pursuit of threats and provocation’’.
He added that the US would not allow the country ‘‘to hide behind the Olympic banner the reality that they enslave their people and threaten the wider region’’.
The communist state yesterday announced that it was sending Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jongun, to the games. Kim Yo-jong, believed to be around 30 years old, will be the first member of the ruling Kim family to visit South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War ended.
The rogue state was expected to strain relations by putting on a military parade today, in a show of strength to rival the spectacle of South Korea’s opening ceremony and as a propaganda tool to stir patriotic pride.
The US has used the Pyeongchang games to highlight North Korea’s brutal human rights record, and Pence will be joined at the opening ceremony by the father of Otto Warmbier, an American who died shortly after being released from 17 months of detention in North Korea.
However, despite his tough rhetoric, Pence has opened the door to talks with the North Korean delegation, which would be the highest-level American contact with the regime in decades.
– Telegraph Group