Wall Street Journal, 8 August 2017

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ramped up pressure Tuesday on Southeast Asian nations to shut down North Korean front companies, seeking cooperation on sanctions enforcement from longtime allies despite recent friction.

Mr. Tillerson visited Thailand and Malaysia after an Asian security summit in the Philippines at which North Korea flatly rejected any bid to force negotiations over its growing nuclear deterrent and said those weapons weren’t targeted at any other nation than the United States.

“Southeast Asia is a logical place to focus on,” said Sheena Greitens, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri and an expert on North Korea sanctions evasion. “Many of the existing U.N. sanctions on the books already aren’t strictly enforced, and so the effect of recent measures such as the U.N. resolution is going to depend heavily on how seriously countries take enforcement.”