North and South Korea agree to form joint Olympic team

The United States urged an escalation in pressure on North Korea over its nuclear missile program Tuesday, despite a more cautious tone from key US ally South Korea.

While many of those in attendance urged stronger diplomatic pressure on North Korea, Tillerson and his Canadian counterpart, Chrystia Freeland, agreed that a truly reversed course of aggression by Kim is probably not obtainable if the saber rattling and personal insults continue on both sides. -Canadian summit in Vancouver on Tuesday.

The so-called Vancouver Group is formed by 20 countries that fought in the 1950-53 Korean War.

The conspicuous absence of China and Russian Federation in the meeting in Vancouver threatens USA efforts to come up with a global coalition of nations that would efficiently take action and tighten the economic sanctions against North Korea.

The ongoing talks between South Korea and North Korea do not run counter to worldwide economic sanctions imposed on the North, the top South Korean diplomat said Tuesday following a multilateral meeting focused on North Korea in Vancouver, Canada.

It’s expected the meeting will cover a review of the current situation with North Korea, sanctions, diplomacy and next steps.

Freeland said no real progress can be made until Pyongyang disarms.

“It is not the time to ease pressure or to reward North Korea”, he said.

‘We are at a very tenuous stage in terms of how far North Korea has taken their program and what we can do to convince them to take an alternative path.

United States officials say discussion of a military strike option has lost some momentum since North and South Korea held formal talks for the first time in two years this month and Pyongyang said it would send athletes to the Winter Olympics that South Korea will host next month.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry says in a statement that the North informed it of such a plan during talks Wednesday at the border. The US secretary of state also refused to comment potential contact between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Vice President Mike Pence will lead the USA delegation to attend the Winter Olympics in South Korea, but there is no planned meeting between officials from Washington and Pyongyang, the State Department said. According to CBC News, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said straightforwardly on January 15 that “this meeting is harmful”.

“This meeting you inquired about has no legality and representativeness to speak of from the very beginning, and China is opposed to it from day one”, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters on Tuesday, responding to a reporter asking whether China regretted not participating.

Worldwide treaties obligate all ships to keep their AIS active when at sea, but the ships being used by North Korea for smuggling seem to pay no heed.

One of the questions heading into the meeting was whether participants would endorse a US call for naval interdiction of North Korean shipping, following concerns about smuggling.

“Any meeting organized in the name of the so-called “U.N. Command” reflects Cold War thinking, which will only create divisions in the global community and undermine the joint efforts that are being made to resolve properly the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue”.