Senior diplomats from Japan, the United States and South Korea agreed Thursday to increase pressure on North Korea, including through new U.N. sanctions, following its fifth nuclear test and a series of ballistic missile launches this year.
Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama also agreed with Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken of the United States and Lim Sung Nam, South Korea's first vice minister of foreign affairs, to work closely to implement sanctions of their own.
"We reaffirmed the need to heighten pressure on North Korea so that it will abandon its nuclear and missile development and denuclearize," Sugiyama told a joint news conference after the meeting in Tokyo.