The Patriot Post® · North Korea: A Ticking Time Bomb

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in Asia over the weekend. On Friday, he was in South Korea visiting the Demilitarized Zone that separates South Korea from its menacing neighbor to the North. Tillerson quickly made it clear that the time had come for a change from former U.S. policy with North Korea under Barack Obama. “Efforts toward North Korea to achieve peaceful stability over the last two decades have failed to make us safer,” the secretary of state declared. “Let me be very clear, the policy of strategic patience has ended. We’re exploring a new range of diplomatic, security and economic measures. All options are on the table.”

North Korea’s despot Kim Jong Un hasn’t been doing himself any favors by continuing to inflame tensions with his perpetual violations regarding missile testing. While the North’s saber rattling is nothing new, the reality is there have been no consequences. The U.S. and the rest of the world have watched the country become a nuclear power, and now we’re watching the hermit kingdom work toward greater deliverability of its nuclear weapons.

In the meantime, South Korea finds itself in a rough period of political upheaval after former President Park Geun-hye was impeached and forced from office. The election of a new president could significantly change the South’s foreign policy and its geopolitical commitments. It’s becoming apparent that the Far East has degraded into a foreign policy minefield for the U.S. — one that Trump will need to tread through carefully and yet forcefully.

In diffusing North Korea’s growing threat, Tillerson’s words were primarily intended not for the North, but for China. The “People’s Republic,” North Korea’s lifeline, has the power to significantly clamp down on the Kim regime. But with China’s recent ignoring of international maritime law by expansion into the South China Sea, the task of confronting China over its aggression while simultaneously seeking its help with North Korea is a difficult balancing act. Given Kim Jong Un’s undeterred development of missiles with the capacity of reaching U.S. territory, it’s no longer merely a regional concern with America’s allies but, also, fast becoming a direct threat to the U.S.