International Allies Versus North Korea

"The meeting of the Vancouver Group is going to be another visible sign that the international community is acting in concert to speak to the government of North Korea and to say this is threatening us all, and the pressure will increase until the behaviour changes."
"Having said that, we are confident that this campaign of international pressure will lead to the best outcome for the whole world, I think the only outcome for the whole world, which is a diplomatic path to a resolution to this crisis."
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Christia Freeland

"At this stage, we are not sure what kind of meeting it will be. We have not made decisions."
"The danger which Canada may feel will be more and more. Canada should be one of the main players."
Japanese official

"What's important for North Korea to know is that this pressure campaign will not abate, we will not be rolling any of it back, it will only intensify as time goes by."
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

Diplomacy has accomplished nothing with North Korea in the past; pacts have been signed, promises made and flouted. Attempts to wheedle North Korea away from its inexorable path to nuclear weaponry and intercontinental ballistic missiles, along with threats have been hugely disappointing. Efforts to appease the Kims have resulted in nothing but temporary and largely illusory halts in the regime of the People's Republic's steady and accelerating mission, and to continue to rely on the hope that further talks could conceivably result in an understanding and accommodation on the part of Kim to backtrack on his trajectory remains an illusion.

The uncompromising stance of defiance and bellicose threats emanating from Kim Jong Un remain unchanged. He heeds no one, not the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, nor the Chinese patrons who have supported the Kim dynasty whose presence represents a dike in the Chinese regime's castle. Now news that Kim has reacted with the ultimate finality toward a principal architect of his nuclear program by 'dismissing' him from existence through execution. Park In Young, officially responsible for the Punggye-ri nuclear test site is no more.

That news carried to South Korea through the defection of yet another North Korean soldier. This man, formerly chief of Bureau 131 of the ruling Central Committee supervised military facilities such as the Punggye-ri underground nuclear test facility and the Sohae Satellite Launching Station. Some feel his execution is linked to the October nuclear test, the country’s sixth, a 100-kiloton hydrogen bomb seven times more powerful than the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

The test facility is located south of a mountain, Mantapsan, and a series of small earthquakes shook the area after a September test launch, leaving fears the mountain, may no longer be stable. A number of tunnels collapsed, killing up to 200 people. "If North Korea were to attempt to continue testing under this mountain , then we would expect to see new tunneling in the future near the North Portal, still under Mt. Mantap,". explained Frank Pabian and Jack Liu, researchers who wrote a report published on the North Korea monitoring website 38 North.

A South Korean scientist shows seismic waves taking place in North Korea on a screen at the Korea Meteorological Administration center on September 3 in Seoul. More than 200 people are believed to have died in underground tunnels after a collapse at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear facility. North Korea is believed to have punished an official responsible for the test site, according to reports in Japanese newspaper Asahi

So there is some internal destabilization linked to North Korea's indelible venture to destabilize the parts of the world he ascribes threats emanating from, toward North Korea. An stealth American training initiative that almost sounds like a combination of Bay of Pigs and Osama bin Laden assassination has been underway, where American soldiers have been training with their South Korean counterparts in potential rescue operations should war break out. According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, the exercise was meant to simulate "infiltrating North Korea and removing weapons of mass destruction in case of conflict." 

In the meanwhile, the United States, Japan, South Korea have been placed on notice that they are all tagged by North Korea as possible targets should Kim Jong Un feel convinced at any time that his country is under direct threat of invasion, when a missile carrying a nuclear payload could be armed and aimed in their direction. As far as Canada is concerned, in aiming for the U.S. mainland, such a missile could conceivably go astray and fall short of its target, hitting Canada. A reality that brings Canada into the planning fray.

Canada offered Vancouver as a meeting site, for a meeting called the "United Nations Command Sending States Meeting", outlined in a briefing by a U.S. State Department official. The countries in question were members of the United Nations Command representing military grouping countries such as South Korea, the United States and fifteen others, including Canada, all of which contributed to defense of the South during the 1950 to 1953 Korean war. All the Korean war states are to be invited to attend along with Japan, India and Sweden.

Japan, the one nation that has suffered two ICBMs flying over and into its airspace, falling into the Sea of Japan, appears to be uncertain about the purpose and the potential outcome of such a conference. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono hesitated to commit his country to any move before year's end. The Japanese offer a realistic point of view that dialogue simply for the sake of dialogue is essentially meaningless. The strategy at present is to place sufficient pressure on North Korea through economic sanctions to force it to seek a mutual agreement.

This too has never worked in the past. While ordinary people in the North become ever more impoverished and the spectre of starvation hangs over the countryside, Kim Jong Un's privileged officials will never lack for both fundamentals and luxury items to ease their passage in life. And China, while genuinely expressing alarm over the impetuously dangerous actions that Kim mounts -- deliberately oblivious to the danger he places himself and his country in, using the blackmail of imposing mass death and destruction on the South -- yet hesitates to abandon its client state.