MODERATOR: Good afternoon, everyone.
Good afternoon.
Thanks for joining us today.
We have the pleasure to have our Acting Assistant Secretary Susan Thornton from our Bureau of
East Asia and Pacific Affairs, who is going to brief today about the meetings that she’s
been in, including what Secretary Tillerson had to say on the DPRK this morning.
She’ll open it up with a few brief remarks, and then we’ll take questions.
When I – I’ll call on you for questions, if you can give your name and affiliation.
And keep your question brief because we don’t have a lot of time here today.
And with that, I’ll turn it over to (Acting) Assistant Secretary Thornton.
MS THORNTON: Thank you very much, and thank you all for being here this afternoon.
Sorry to be a little bit late coming over from the UN building, but I’m really happy
that you all are able to come and listen this afternoon to a brief readout of what we’ve
been doing today over at the UN building.
Of course, today we had Secretary Tillerson in town for a ministerial level UN Security
Council meeting.
This month is the U.S. presidency of the Security Council, and we convened the first-ever ministerial
level Security Council meeting on the issue of the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
We had a very good discussion this morning in the council.
I’m sure some of you have already seen some of the remarks that were mentioned, but I
would characterize that conversation as really reflecting a broad consensus among the entire
council about the seriousness of the threat posed by the nuclear and missile programs
in North Korea, the frustration on the part of the council over the repeated violations
of UN Security Council resolutions about this issue, and a resolve to sort of address the
issue, step up the pressure, and really try to make a concerted and united effort to get
the North Korean regime to change its mind about its weapons programs and come to the
table and be prepared to talk about denuclearization.
So I think the Secretary had a number of meetings in addition to the council meeting.
He met in trilateral format with the Japanese Foreign Minister Kishida and the Korean Foreign
Minister Yun this morning before the council session to discuss further our trilateral
cooperation with respect to the North Korean issue.
And then after the session this afternoon, he had a bilateral meeting with Foreign Minister
Wang Yi of China to discuss how to go about the approach on keeping up the pressure on
North Korea and pursuing a strategy of cooperation going forward to bring about some kind of
resolution to this issue.
The Secretary had a number of other bilateral meetings, and he’s been doing outreach to
foreign ministers around the globe in the run-up to this meeting today to try to solicit
and coordinate our international effort to step up the pressure on this issue, which
is, frankly, becoming very quickly the number one national security priority for the Trump
administration.
So with that, I’ll just offer those brief opening remarks and then be happy to take
a couple of questions.
I don’t have a lot of time, so I’m sorry about that.
But I’m happy to do what I can here this afternoon.
So I’m going to – yeah.
QUESTION: Thank you.
My name is Nimostoshi Nagata (ph) with Kyodo News of Japan.
Could you tell us what exactly the Chinese are saying in case of something extraordinary
happens in North Korea, and what kind of specific measures are they willing to take?
And also, do you think the possibility of major, major conflict is over for now, or
is it approaching?
MS THORNTON: Yeah, thank you.
So I think on the issue of what the Chinese would be willing to do should there be another
major provocation – and I take it that was what you meant by the first part of your question
– the Chinese have been pretty clear, and I think Secretary Tillerson even spoke about
it a bit yesterday in some of the media coverage that he had, that they’ve been signaling
clearly to the North Koreans that they will be willing to take additional significant
measures in the event of a further provocation.
And by that, I think we mean probably another nuclear test.
They’ve already done five of those, and there is some talk that there might be a sixth
nuclear test.
That would be a major provocation.
Also the potential for an ICBM, intercontinental ballistic missile launch, would be another
category of major provocation.
And I think the Chinese have been reaching out, talking to the North Koreans, explaining
to them that there would be very serious consequences both from the UN angle with regard to additional
UN Security Council resolutions that would come in the wake of such an event, but also
unilateral measures that China would take.
They have not been specific about what they would be willing to do, but they have indicated
to us that they would be serious measures.
And so far I think we feel that whatever we’ve been able to do, whatever China has been able
to do with North Korea, at least for this recent period of anniversaries in North Korea,
they have not conducted a major provocation.
So we’re not drawing any major conclusions from that, but that’s at least not bad news.
On the second part, major confrontation, I know the President had some comments on this.
I mean, certainly the consensus at the council today was that everybody understands that
it’s preferable to resolve this challenge peacefully, and that is what the Secretary
and his colleagues today at the council were talking about – our resolve to do.
We don’t want to take any options off the table because this has become an urgent threat
and time is running out.
We’ve spent a lot of time over the past several decades working on this problem, and
we can’t keep working on it for several more decades.
We don’t have that kind of time.
So I think we’re working on how to solve this peacefully.
That’s why we’re talking about this pressure campaign that will change the calculus of
the regime in North Korea and convince them to come to the table, make a serious effort
at discussing with the rest of the international community the denuclearization program.
So I think that’s – that’s what we’re after.
We’ll see how it goes.
QUESTION: Thank you.
Manik Mehta, Syndicated.
There seems to be a lot of confusion on the deployment of THAAD in South Korea.
The President made some remarks in an interview with Reuters, demanding or asking for $1 billion
from Seoul, and Seoul responded immediately, saying this is not going to happen.
Could you give us an update on that, please?
MS THORNTON: Sure.
So, I mean, I don’t know if I would call it confusion, but it is true that the President
is very serious about burden-sharing with allies with whom we have military partnerships.
And so I think when he thinks about all kinds of deployments around the world – and you’ve
heard him also on the subject of NATO members not paying up to the required percentage of
their GDP that they’re required to pay into NATO for their – or for their defense budgets
– I think this is another case where the President just wants to be sure that we’re
doing the kind of burden-sharing in our alliances in Asia and in our alliance with South Korea
that he thinks is fair and equitable.
Of course, we all know that the South Koreans are a really bedrock ally.
They do step up and do an awful lot.
They pay 2.7 percent of their GDP into their defense budget, so they’re quite a bit above
a number of our other partners.
And I think we’re – the President does realize that they have also contributed to
burden-sharing on the THAAD deployment.
So I think he’s just looking to make sure that the U.S. is getting kind of equitable
treatment in burden-sharing out of the alliance.
But I think on the THAAD deployment, he recognizes that we’ve already done discussions on burden-sharing,
that the ROK has contributed to that deployment, and that they are a very solid ally when it
comes to burden-sharing and in sort of stepping up and being right with us there in the alliance.
QUESTION: My name is Tanaka from NHK.
Can I – I’m asking about today’s meeting between Wang Yi, China – can you elaborate
more on what did – did Secretary ask specific measures for China to take regarding DPRK?
MS THORNTON: Well, this conversation followed on a number of other conversations that we’ve
had with the Chinese, both in bilateral format and multilateral format.
We had the multilateral council session.
There was a multilateral lunch session at which North Korea was also discussed in the
same – among the same group that was in the council session.
And then he had the bilateral meeting with the foreign minister, with Foreign Minister
Wang, after that.
So it was a long conversation in three parts, I would say.
And in and among those three parts, there was quite a lot of discussion of both general
approaches and also sort of a more detailed or sort of granular sequencing and roadmap
of things we would expect to see over the coming months on the issue of North Korea,
on the issue of international cooperation, and also on the issue of China's contribution
to that cooperation.
I don’t think I want to get into the details of the private conversation, but there are
very specific things that we’ve been discussing both that China could do with North Korea
to try to test their – whether or not they’ve come to some kind of change of heart over
the seriousness with which they would approach a discussion about denuclearization, but also
on issues that they would pursue in the case of another provocation or in the effort to
step up pressure.
So those discussions are ongoing.
QUESTION: Guillermo Fesser from El Intermedio TV, a news show in Spain.
So Secretary of State has pointed to nations that he said have not fully enforced the UN
resolutions against Korea and said that the U.S. won’t hesitate to sanction those countries.
I would like to know which countries that the Secretary of State had in mind, and would
those countries be considered enemies in case a military action is considered?
I mean, are we talking one enemy, North Korea, or are we talking of a mingled situation in
the world?
MS THORNTON: Yeah.
So I don’t think he was having in mind a very specific list of countries when he says
everybody has obligations to fully enforce the UN Security Council resolutions.
We all know that in its efforts to circumvent sanctions and other kinds of restrictions
put on its economy, the North Korean networks are quite well established in very underground
ways that are hard to detect, are hard for countries to stop sometimes.
And there was discussion at the council this morning about the need to help countries build
up their capacity to detect these kinds of underground networks that are maybe fueling
and financing the weapons programs in North Korea.
So I don’t think he had any particular countries in mind on that list, but we do know that
the North Koreans are getting around the sanctions because some countries are not able to or
willing to put the resources in to catch all of those transgressions.
So I think that’s what he meant.
And that if we can’t get satisfaction if we bring information about some of these networks
to a country, if we can’t get it resolved by burden-sharing and sharing cooperation
and information, that we would have to take other steps to stop those financial flows
from getting to the North Koreans so that they can use them to further their weapons
programs, and that’s what he meant by the imposing our own national measures on those
companies.
QUESTION: Thank you.
I’m Yuji Niwa (ph) from Kyodo News.
I want to ask about from China’s voice – Chinese foreign minister proposes restart of Six-Party
Talks today, but I see that Secretary Tillerson didn’t mention the restart of Six-Party
Talks.
And U.S. stance is very different from the Chinese stance.
So how do you fill the differences among them?
MS THORNTON: Yeah.
It’s going to be hard for me to speak for the Chinese and their position, but what I
think you’re getting at is that there was a lot of talk on the part of the Chinese delegation
about dialogue and the need to try to get the North Koreans back to the negotiating
table.
What Secretary Tillerson has said is we want to solve this diplomatically, we want to solve
this peacefully, but we have not detected any seriousness on the part of the North Korean
regime about coming to the table to discuss a negotiated solution and denuclearization
or abandonment of their weapons programs.
And so I think we’re looking for some signal of seriousness that would lead us to think
it would be worth having these kinds of talks.
Whereas on the Chinese side, I think they are more looking further down the road at
the peaceful resolution and how we will get to talks, and so there’s a little bit of
a difference in emphasis there.
I don’t think the Chinese are particularly wedded to one format for the talks or another;
they’re just looking down the road to how we’ll get to talks, and we are looking at
the near term about how we can tell whether or not the North Koreans are serious about
the talks.
Because for us, that’s the main point.
MODERATOR: We have time, I think, for just one last question.
MS THORNTON: Okay.
I’ll get you later.
Last one?
QUESTION: Thank you.
Alexandra Makino from the Tokyo Shimbun.
Just to follow up on what you were saying right now, what practically would you consider
a signal of that seriousness?
So what would you like to see from North Korea to show that they are ready to come back to
negotiations, are taking it seriously?
MS THORNTON: Yeah, that’s a very good question, and I think we’ll know it when we see it.
If there’s a big provocation, then we’ll also know that that’s not the answer we
were looking for, okay?
(Laughter.)
All right.
Thank you all very much.
It’s great to be here with you.
Appreciate the opportunity to talk with everyone.
MODERATOR: Thank you so much for coming today.
Just to reiterate, this briefing was on the record, and we will send out a transcript
as soon as it is available.
And the video and audio will also be up as well.
Thank you.
MS THORNTON: Thank you.