{"id":28101,"date":"2016-08-27T04:53:49","date_gmt":"2016-08-27T04:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/un-security-council-unanimously-condemns-north\/"},"modified":"2016-08-27T04:53:43","modified_gmt":"2016-08-27T04:53:43","slug":"un-security-council-unanimously-condemns-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/un-security-council-unanimously-condemns-north\/","title":{"rendered":"UN Security Council Unanimously Condemns North Korea Missile Launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

{The U.N. Security Council has unanimously condemned North Korea\u2019s latest ballistic missile launch. The strong denunciation was backed by China, North Korea’s main ally.}<\/p>\n

The 15-member Council said late Friday in a statement drafted by the United States that it would “continue to closely monitor the situation and take further significant measures.” The statement did not say what those measures might be.<\/p>\n

The statement was approved after several rounds of negotiations with China, which has not agreed to previous drafts, expressing concern of an increase in tensions in the region.<\/p>\n

North Korea’s latest ballistic missile launch Tuesday was fired from a submarine. The missile flew toward Japan. It was North Korea’s first successful launch from a submarine and the most recent in a string of such tests and launches over the past few months in defiance of U.N. resolutions.<\/p>\n

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the the missile launch was an “unforgivable, reckless act” that threatened Japanese security.<\/p>\n

Jon Min Dok, an official with the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Saturday “The U.S. and its allies have called our test-firing a violation of (U.N.) resolutions and brought it up to the U.N. Security Council for discussion. This is really a terrible provocation, it’s like the guilty accusing the innocent.”<\/p>\n

He went on to say, “The best way for the U.S. to escape a deadly strike from us is by refraining from insulting our dignity and threatening our security . . . .”<\/p>\n

The United States and Japan requested an emergency meeting of the Security Council Wednesday. Afterward, council President Ramlan bin Ibrahim of Malaysia said there was a \u201cgeneral sense of condemnation by most members,\u201d but that there would be discussions about how to phrase a statement to reporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the fourth time that an incident has occurred in recent times, and up until this point on [these] last four, something has not been agreed\u201d to by the council, Britain\u2019s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Peter Wilson told reporters Thursday. \u201cWe want to see a press statement agreed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Main obstacle<\/p>\n

The main obstacle to council consensus has been China. Traditionally Pyongyang\u2019s closest and most powerful ally, Beijing did express its frustration in March, supporting a new round of the toughest international sanctions on North Korea to date.<\/p>\n

Since then, Pyongyang has launched more than a half-dozen missiles in defiance of the international community.<\/p>\n

Charles Armstrong, Korean studies professor at Columbia University in New York, said the uptick in launches is due to the adoption of \u201c[Resolution] 2270, then the THAAD deployment and then, generally, the North Koreans showing they can get away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, is the advanced U.S. anti-missile system that is soon to be deployed in South Korea to defend against North Korean missile threats. It has both Pyongyang and Beijing on edge.<\/p>\n

Armstrong said on a recent visit to the Chinese capital that he heard a lot of anti-THAAD talk from government officials and in the official media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chinese were completely obsessed with this,\u201d he noted. \u201cThey really see THAAD as not directed against North Korea, but really a threat to China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill Brown, a former U.S. official and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University\u2019s School of Foreign Service in Washington, said the Chinese are overreacting to THAAD.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is probably caught up in a bad U.S.-China atmosphere. They think we have provoked them in the South China Sea; we think they are being too aggressive in the South China Sea,” Brown said.<\/p>\n

{{Regional issues}}<\/p>\n

There is also the issue of the annual joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises involving thousands of air, ground, naval and special operations forces, further irritating the Chinese and North Koreans.<\/p>\n

All of these factors have affected U.S.-Chinese cooperation on North Korea in the U.N. Security Council.<\/p>\n

Brown said that it is a \u201cdelicate game\u201d because the more noise the U.S. makes about the missile launches, the more some Chinese officials might think it’s in their interest to let Pyongyang antagonize the Americans.<\/p>\n

He said Washington also tends to blame Beijing for sanctions failures and hope they will toughen their implementation of them \u2014 an unlikely prospect.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina has different goals with respect to North Korea, some of which coincide with ours, but many of which do not,” Brown said.<\/p>\n

But in the end, a loud Security Council condemnation is unlikely to change the situation in either direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really about the enforcement of sanctions already on the books and whether that will move the situation in a positive direction,\u201d Armstrong said.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{The U.N. Security Council has unanimously condemned North Korea\u2019s latest ballistic missile launch. The strong denunciation was backed by China, North Korea’s main ally.} The 15-member Council said late Friday in a statement drafted by the United States that it would “continue to closely monitor the situation and take further significant measures.” The statement did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2475],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-28101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-voice-of-america"],"bylines":[{"id":2475,"name":"VOICE OF AMERICA","slug":"voice-of-america","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2475,"name":"VOICE OF AMERICA","slug":"voice-of-america","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28101"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=28101"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=28101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}