Seoul (Reuters): Trump and new South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet in Washington next month, with North Korea expected to be high on the agenda, South Korean media said.
Moon's top foreign policy adviser, Chung Eui-yong, and Matt Pottinger, overseeing Asian affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, met in Seoul on Tuesday in the first direct contact between the two administrations since Moon's inauguration last week.
In a unanimously agreed statement, the 15-member UN Security Council said it was of vital importance that North Korea show "sincere commitment to denuclearization through concrete action and stressed the importance of working to reduce tensions".
"To that end, the Security Council demanded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea conduct no further nuclear and ballistic missile tests," the council said, adding that it was ready to impose further sanctions on the country.
The statement also condemned an April 28 ballistic missile launch by Pyongyang.
Following that launch, Washington began talks with China on possible new U.N. sanctions. Traditionally, the United States and China have negotiated new measures before involving remaining council members.
The Security Council first imposed sanctions on North Korea in 2006 and has strengthened the measures in response to its five nuclear tests and two long-range rocket launches. Pyongyang is threatening a sixth nuclear test.
Trump warned in an interview with Reuters this month that a "major, major conflict" with North Korea was possible. In a show of force, the United States sent an aircraft carrier strike group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, to waters off the Korean peninsula to conduct drills with South Korea and Japan.
Admiral Harry Harris, the top U.S. commander in the Asia-Pacific, said on Tuesday continued missile launches by North Korea showed the importance of the alliance between Japan and the United States.
"The actions of North Korea are unacceptable," Harris said at the start of a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. "It underscores not only the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance, but also U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral cooperation."
Harris is to meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Defense Minister Tomomi Inada later in the day.
The U.S. Seventh Fleet carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, left Yokosuka in Japan on Tuesday on its regular spring patrol and will be out for around three to four months, according to a Seventh Fleet spokesman.
The spokesman declined to say where it was bound and added he was not aware how long the Carl Vinson would remain in the region.
Apart from worries about North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons programs, cyber security researchers have found technical evidence they said could link North Korea with the global WannaCry "ransomware" cyber attack that has infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries since Friday.
Symantec and Kaspersky Lab said on Monday some code in an earlier version of the WannaCry software had also appeared in programs used by the Lazarus Group, which researchers from many companies have identified as a North Korea-run hacking operation.
