President Donald Trump met with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea in Germany on Friday to discuss North Korea.<\/b>
\nThe three leaders issued a joint statement on \u201cthe serious and escalating threat posed by the nuclear and ballistic missile programs of the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea.\u201d
The three leaders condemned North Korea\u2019s Fourth of July launch of a \u201cballistic missile with intercontinental range\u201d as \u201ca major escalation that directly violates multiple United Nation\u2019s Security Council resolutions and that clearly demonstrates the growing threat the DPRK poses to the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Japan, as well as other countries around the world.\u201d
The statement included both a promise to \u201coffer a brighter future for the DPRK if it chooses the right path, \u201d and a call for a new United Nations Security Council resolution against North Korea, with \u201cadditional sanctions to demonstrate to the DPRK that there are serious consequences for its destabilizing, provocative, and escalatory actions.\u201d
Trump, Abe, and Moon also called for other nations to reduce their \u201ceconomic relations\u201d with North Korea, and asked \u201cnations that border the DPRK to make further efforts to convince the DPRK regime to abandon its current threatening and provocative path and immediately take steps to denuclearize and to halt its ballistic missile program.\u201d Aside from President Moon\u2019s South Korea, the only two nations bordering the DPRK are China and Russia.
President Trump also emerged from the meeting with a renewed dedication to the \u201c ironclad commitment of the United States to defend the ROK and Japan using the full range of its conventional and nuclear capabilities.\u201d
Looking behind the scenes of the trilateral meeting, the Korea Times cites a \u201chigh-level government official\u201d who said Trump told Abe and Moon that America is considering further \u201ceconomic sanctions designed to punish Chinese firms and individuals doing business with North Korea.\u201d
The Trump administration took some significant steps in that direction two weeks ago. China strongly protested the Treasury Department\u2019s decision to sanction two Chinese individuals and a shipping company for helping North Korea with its nuclear weapons program.
\u201cThe purpose of such sanctions is to put North Korea in an unbearable situation and give it no option other than coming forward for talks, \u201d said this high-level official.
Another interesting possibility raised by the Korea Times source is that Trump will ask Chinese President Xi Jinping to block or sharply curtail oil shipments to North Korea during the G20 summit. President Moon reportedly asked China to do more during his own bilateral meeting with Xi on Thursday, but Xi rebuffed his request by talking about the \u201cblood alliance\u201d between China and North Korea. Oil is perhaps the heaviest leverage Beijing has over Pyongyang.<\/p>\n

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