President Trump reacted Thursday to news that China has been illegally selling oil to North Korea, tweeting that Beijing has been caught “RED HANDED.”
Trump, who is at his South Florida resort for the Christmas break, warned that China’s violation of sanctions against the rogue Pyongyang regime for its development of nuclear weapons harms the effort to find a “friendly solution.”
Caught RED HANDED – very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea. There will never be a friendly solution to the North Korea problem if this continues to happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 28, 2017
U.S. spy satellites have caught Chinese ships illegally selling oil to North Korean boats about 30 times since October.
South Korean government sources told the English-language South Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo the satellites show large Chinese and North Korean ships illegally trading in oil in the West Sea.
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In September, the United Nations Security Council responded to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s nuclear missile program by banning the country from importing natural gas and capping its crude oil imports.
The U.S. imposed additional sanctions in November on a number of North Korean shipping firms and Chinese trading companies.
Satellite images released by the U.S. Treasury Department appear to show one of the North Korean ships that was sanctioned transferring oil from a Chinese vessel.
Under the sanctions, Pyongyang is allowed only 500,000 barrels of oil imports a year. Last week, North Korea denounced the sanctions as “an act of war.”
Asked about the South Korean newspaper’s report, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying insisted “the Chinese government has been completely and strictly enforcing Security Council resolutions,” Fox News reported.
The Daily Telegraph of London reported last week, citing an unnamed source within the Trump administration and two former officials, that the U.S. is drawing up plans for a “bloody nose” military attack on North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program. In addition, foreign military forces told FoxNews.com that U.S. military forces trained earlier this month for a mission that would put them on North Korean soil with the aim of “infiltrating” and “removing weapons of mass destruction.”
In October, a defense source said a unit of U.S. special forces tasked with carrying out “decapitation” operations against the Kim regime may be aboard a nuclear-powered submarine docked in the South Korean port of Busan, the Telegraph reported at the time.
The U.S. Navy insisted the USS Michigan, known for carrying special-ops teams, was docked in a “routine port visit,” and the U.S. military also denied training for decapitation missions or regime change. But the presence of what appeared to be silos for tiny submarines used to transport Navy SEALs for their most covert missions increased speculation.
John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said one of the only solutions to North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is to convince China to support regime change.
He suggested the U.S. could soon be forced to make a difficult decision.
“We’re either going to have to kind of play it using military force, or accept that North Korea will be the nuclear arms sale center of the world – to Iran, to terrorist groups, to other third-world countries that have nuclear aspirations,” Bolton said, according to FoxNews.com.
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