Allies push to curb N. Korea activities
SEOUL, South Korea — The national security advisers of the United States, South Korea and Japan on Saturday called for a stronger international push to suppress North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and missiles, its cybertheft activities and alleged arms transfers to Russia.
The meeting in Seoul came as tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest in years, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un accelerating the expansion of his nuclear and missile program and flaunting an escalatory nuclear doctrine that authorizes the preemptive use of nuclear weapons.
The United States and its Asian allies have responded by increasing the visibility of their trilateral partnership in the region and strengthening their combined military exercises, which Kim condemns as invasion rehearsals.
Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have also expressed concerns about a potential arms alignment between North Korea and Russia. They worry Kim is providing badly needed munitions to help Russian President Vladimir Putin wage war in Ukraine in exchange for Russian technology assistance to upgrade his nuclear-armed military.
Speaking after the meeting, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington is working with Seoul and Tokyo to strengthen defense cooperation and improve response to North Korean missile testing and spacelaunch activities, including a real-time information sharing arrangement on North Korean missile launches that the countries plan to start at an unspecified date this month.
He also said the countries have agreed to new initiatives to more effectively respond to North Korean efforts to bypass U.S.-led international sanctions that aim to choke off funds for its nuclear weapons and missile program.
“This will be a new effort with respect to cryptocurrency and money laundering and how we disrupt North Korea’s capacity to gain revenue from the hacking and stealing of cryptocurrency and then laundering it through exchanges,” he said.
Sullivan declined to share detailed U.S. assessments on the types and volume of North Korean arms being shipped to Russia and didn’t comment on the specifics of his discussions with South Korean and Japanese officials over the issue, but insisted that “there’s no daylight among us in terms of the types of weapons transfers that we are seeing. And those continue and they represent a grave concern for us.”
South Korean intelligence and military officials have said North Korea may have shipped more than a million artillery shells to Russia beginning in August, weeks before Kim traveled to Russia’s Far East for a rare summit with Putin that sparked international concerns about a potential arms deal. Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied U.S. and South Korean claims.
In a joint news conference after Saturday’s trilateral meeting, Cho Tae-yong, South Korea’s national security office director, said the three security advisers reaffirmed North Korea’s obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions that call for its denuclearization and ban any weapons trade with other countries.
Takeo Akiba, Japan’s national security secretariat secretary general, said the “unprecedented frequency and patterns” of North Korean ballistic missile launches necessitate a deeper and more effective partnership between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.
South Korea, the U.S., Japan and Australia have also announced their own sanctions on North Korea over its spy satellite launch last month. North Korea argues it has the right to launch spy satellites to monitor U.S. and South Korean military activities and enhance the threat of its nuclear-capable missiles.
During his conversation with reporters, Sullivan said the allies are preparing for the possibility that North Korea will up the ante of its weapons demonstrations and threats in 2024, possibly including the country’s seventh nuclear test.
Direct military action is also a concern after the North recently announced it was abandoning a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement on reducing border tensions after the South partially suspended the agreement, which had established border buffers and no-fly zones. Some experts say that has raised the risk of border-area shootings or clashes.