ANALYSIS/OPINION:

North Korea threatened to restart nuclear tests on the Peninsula after Secretary of State John Kerry called for tightening sanctions on the rogue regime. North Korea has continued to conduct ballistic missile tests in defiance of United Nations mandates. These tests are alarming American allies in the region.

“We are ready to show that even a [powerful] country will surely not be safe if it tries to torment and harm a small country,” North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told his counterparts from the U.S., China, Japan and other nations at a regional security meeting, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Following the meeting, Mr. Ri suggested Pyongyang would consider a fresh nuclear-bomb test following a nuclear detonation this year, South Korea’s Yonhap News agency reported. Mr. Ri on Tuesday said the U.S. had made a declaration of war by criticizing North Korea’s human-rights record. “The United States will have to pay dearly a terrifying price,” the statement quoted him as saying.

Mr. Kerry said it was “critical for the world and for all countries to fully enforce the sanctions that have been imposed,” calling North Korea “the only country in the world defying the international movement towards responsibility” by continuing to develop its missiles.

“The situation simply cannot be tolerated,” Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said at the meeting, said his spokesman, Yasuhisa Kawamura. Mr. Kishida asked gathered nations to demand that North Korea refrain from further provocative actions, comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions and take concrete steps toward denuclearization, Mr. Kawamura said.

It seems that the North Korean situation, as well as other national security problems facing the United States, can only be solved by applying pressure where it hurts. The free world must be prepared to do this and not relent. If we have the cards we need to play them. Perhaps only a President Trump can do that.

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