According to South Korea’s Newsis, President Yoon Suk-yeol said the United Nations Security Council should respond to North Korea’s missile provocations in a coordinated manner.
According to the newspaper, Yoon made the remarks during a phone discussion with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, during which he also advocated for close communication to assist North Korea in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.
North Korea declared a state of emergency last month after experiencing its first verified outbreak of COVID-19 infections.
South Korea and the United States have offered assistance, including vaccines, but Pyongyang has remained defiant, escalating tensions with a succession of missile tests.
Yoon’s plea for an unified UN response comes after China and Russia vetoed a US-led effort to impose new UN penalties on Pyongyang in response to its continued ballistic missile tests.
For the first time since Pyongyang was sanctioned in 2006, the Security Council’s 15 members were publicly split by the double veto.
Wendy Sherman, the United States’ Deputy Secretary of State, met Kim Gunn, South Korea’s Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, in Washington on Thursday and discussed ways to ensure a ‘strong, coordinated, international response’ to North Korea’s ‘destabilising activities,’ according to a tweet from Sherman.
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