US, South Korea, and Japan Pledge to Denuclearize North Korea

The United States, South Korea, and Japan reaffirmed on Saturday their commitment to the “complete denuclearization” of North Korea, which has firmly refused to abandon its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

Speculation is mounting over the possibility of a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on the sidelines of the APEC summit scheduled for next month in China, particularly as Trump has repeatedly invited Pyongyang to hold talks on the nuclear issue.

A statement said that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his South Korean and Japanese counterparts, Cho Hyun and Toshimitsu Motegi, “reaffirmed their firm commitment to the complete denuclearization” of North Korea during talks held on Friday on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

The three ministers also pledged “full implementation” of United Nations Security Council resolutions, including a ban on providing any financial support that contributes to funding North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, according to a U.S. State Department statement.

Despite long-standing UN sanctions, North Korea has consolidated its status as a nuclear state, with its regime repeatedly declaring that its nuclear arsenal is permanent and irreversible.

Pyongyang also condemned on Saturday a statement issued by a group of countries monitoring the implementation of sanctions against it, asserting that “the conventional campaign of sanctions imposed by the United States and the West cannot affect the status of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) as a nuclear-armed state.”