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US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

US Secretary of Defense James Mattis stressed on Aug. 30 that the US is “never out of diplomatic solutions” on the North Korea issue. His remarks came after President Donald Trump tweeted a message repudiating dialogue with Pyongyang.

Ahead of a meeting that day with visiting South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo at the Pentagon, Mattis responded to questions from reporters on whether Trump’s tweet that dialogue with North Korea was “not the answer” meant diplomatic solutions had been exhausted.

“No,” Mattis replied.

During the meeting, the two ministers shared their support for the current diplomatic efforts for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and stressed that “strong, effective and credible military power will support the reliability of diplomatic efforts,” the South Korean Defense Ministry reported.

Earlier that day, Trump posted a Twitter message reading, “The U.S. has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!” Judging from Mattis’s subsequent remarks, the tweet appeared to have been intended as a pressure tactic rather than a rejection of dialogue with Pyongyang.

Trump also agreed on stronger pressure on North Korea in a telephone conversation the same day with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Regarding his conversation with Trump for a second straight day about the passage of a North Korean missile through Japanese airspace, Abe said he could “not talk [specifically] about the response going ahead,” but added that the two “fully agreed on the need for the international community to continue stepping up pressure.”

Both sides are reportedly weighing whether to push for an international ban on petroleum exports to North Korea. At a regular briefing on Aug. 31, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said considerations for a new UN Security Council resolution would “take into account North Korea’s external economic relationships and sources of foreign currency.”

“Regulations on North Korean crude oil and petroleum product transactions are one option,” Suga said.

By Jung E-gil, senior staff writer and Cho Kye-wan, Tokyo correspondent

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