Southeast Asia showing substantial change toward North Korea

Radio Free Asia

Southeast Asian nations have responded positively to Washington’s calls for pressing North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program, a U.S. State Department official in charge of U.S. policy toward Pyongyang said in mid-December 2017.

Thailand and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have demonstrated “substantial change” in their dealings with Pyongyang, Joseph Yun, pictured, the U.S. special representative for North Korea policy, said after holding meetings with senior Thai government officials in Bangkok.

“We had good discussions on all things DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] and, especially of course, how we see the issues concerning denuclearization,” Yun told reporters in the Thai capital, using the abbreviation of the official name for North Korea.

At recent international meetings, including the Asia Pacific Economic Forum summit in Vietnam and the East Asia summit and other meetings this year in the Philippines, ASEAN countries had shown “very strong support for regional stability and peace,” Yun said.

Participants loudly demanded that North Korea abandon its program of developing and testing nuclear weapons, the diplomat said.

“So, I would say, yes, the countries in the region are committed to upholding the requirements of the U.N. Security Council resolutions and, at the highest levels, they support the goal of a denuclearized North Korea,” Yun said on the final day of a two-day trip to Thailand.

The U.S. State Department, in pursuing a policy this year of “maximum pressure and engagement” toward North Korea, has lobbied countries in the region to downgrade ties with North Korea. All 10 ASEAN members maintain relations with North Korea, which is also a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).

In the wake of an escalation of North Korean missile tests, the United States in August 2017 urged ASEAN leaders meeting in Manila to expel North Korea from ARF, but the regional bloc backed away from taking concrete steps.

However, both the Philippines and Malaysia downgraded bilateral ties with North Korea. In September 2017, the Philippine government announced it had cut trade relations with Pyongyang in compliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Furthermore, ties between Kuala Lumpur were shaken in 2017 after the killing on Malaysian soil of the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, which Malaysia, South Korea and the United States blamed on the government in Pyongyang.

In Thailand’s case, the kingdom has “substantially reduced” trade with North Korea — by as much as 95 percent — Yun said, noting that Thailand is the country that originally invited North Korea to join the ARF grouping, when it held the ASEAN chair back in the 1990s.

According to the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs, trade with North Korea stood at U.S. $1.6 million during the first three quarters of 2017, marking a 94 percent drop from the same period in 2016.

“It’s expected that by late 2017, there will be no export or import of goods between Thailand and North Korea,” Pimchanok Vonkorpon, head of the Thai Commerce Ministry’s Trade Policy and Strategy Office, told Agence France-Presse.

Yun declined to confirm whether he and Thai officials talked about North Korean companies using Bangkok as a Southeast Asian hub. For the United States, there were no remaining areas of concern regarding Thailand’s bilateral relations with the communist regime, he said.