Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that Washington will soon announce the new and tougher sanctions toward North Korea as a measure to make them abandon their nuclear and missile programs. In his statement, Pence called North Korea the planet’s “most tyrannical and oppressive regime.”
Before heading to the Winter Olympics in South Korea, Pence had a speech in Tokyo where he promised that the United States and its allies, including Japan, were going to keep maximum pressure on Pyongyang until it took steps toward “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.”
“To that end, I‘m announcing today the United States of America will soon unveil the toughest and most aggressive round of economic sanctions on North Korea ever. And we will continue to isolate North Korea until it abandons its nuclear and ballistic missile program once and for all,” Pence said after his meeting with the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe.
Prime Minister Abe said after the talks that the two had agreed they could ”never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.”
According to Reuters, Pence’s trip to South Korea on Thursday will coincide with a visit to the Games by North Korea’s ceremonial leader, Kim Yong Nam, the most senior North Korean official to enter the South since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with a truce.
Pence allows for the chance of a meeting with the senior North Korean official but President Donald Trump has ruled out any type of negotiations with Pyongyang anytime soon. Reuters reported that the White House has also cautioned against reading too much into remarks Pence made en route to Japan.
Pence previously warned against the South allowing North Korea, which has sent a team to the Games, to use the Winter Olympics for propaganda.
“We will not allow North Korea to hide behind the Olympic banner the reality that they enslave their people and threaten the wider region,” he said.
As his guest for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, Pence will bring the father of Otto Warmbier, the American student who died in June last year after being imprisoned in North Korea for 17 months.
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