EU expands sanctions against North Korea

As North Koreas ramps up its missile testing, the Trump administration has been mulling a few options to deal with this growing threat from a nation that’s governed by an irrational dictator. And he knew it would raise hell on the global stage.

“Trump’s attack on Syria is unlikely to have any significant effect on a North Korea that is already well versed in the threat posed by the United States”, said Joel Wit, a senior fellow at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

Trump has repeatedly charged that China manipulates its yuan CNY= currency to keep its exports cheap, and he is likely to raise the issue with Xi.

Both scenarios were laid out for Trump by his National Security Council ahead of his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping this week, NBC News reported. And that partly explains why he did it. Launching missiles has for years been the modus operandi for Kim to put himself in the spotlight and state his role on the global political playing field, according to analysts. Reflecting this, Tillerson warned last month that the two decades-long USA policy of “strategic patience” towards North Korea is now over and “all options” are on the table.

Gordon Chang, a Daily Beast columnist and author of “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On The World”, said in an emailed statement to Fox News Friday that the US strike on the Syrian airfield “tells North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un that he must now heed American military power, something that he probably dismissed before”.

In Tokyo, Abe said Trump reaffirmed that he is prepared to consider all possibilities in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

Pyongyang pulled the same trick when Trump hosted Abe in February. Washington withdrew all of its nuclear assets from South Korea 25 years ago. According to Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling party, new kinds of strategic weapons will soar if the USA and South Korea will continue the annual war drills, Yonhap News reported.

U.S. Pacific Command said the North had fired a KN-15 medium range ballistic missile from a land-based facility near Sinpo on the DPRK’s east coast. “He is making it clear that, no matter what North Korea does, the United States won’t commit to direct negotiations unless Pyongyang shows real willingness for disarmament”. Awareness and the ability to address the threat are two very different things, and it appears North Korea does not yet have the tools to eliminate this threat to its missile program, especially if code were buried in hardware devices. “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will”, he told the Financial Times in a widely-publicised interview this week. Trump wants China to use its leverage to get North Korea to back off its threatening behavior. It’s just not realistic. That is, if saving money by gradually ending the protection of a rich, ungrateful South Korean ally is really giving anything up.

The 30-member North Korean delegation, including the players, their coaches and some sports officials, have so far been reticent about speaking to South Korean media.

“Both sides agreed to pursue. plans in order to substantially strengthen the global community’s sanctions and pressure on North Korea”, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said in a statement. “The costs are too high”. The Florida meeting has potential to be the most important yet for Trump with any foreign leader given the stakes in play in what is, in many respects, the country’s most important bilateral relationship.

The council called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and “re-engage in a credible and meaningful dialogue with the global community”.

The U.S. administration’s pledge to increase military hardware in the region comes on the heels of a controversial missile defense system deployment, which has deeply angered China.

Seoul’s unification ministry urged North Korea to walk on the path toward denuclearization.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un..