Co-hosts United States Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland convened the Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on Security and Stability on the Korean Peninsula on January 16, 2018 in Vancouver, British Columbia to discuss the global threat of a nuclearized Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and investigate options for returning stability and security to the region.
Following an Indigenous Welcome Ceremony and opening remarks by Minister Freeland and Secretary Tillerson, foreign policy leaders from twenty nations reaffirmed their commitments to denuclearizing DPRK. Reiterating the United States’ commitment to denuclearization, Secretary Tillerson declared, “We cannot and will not accept North Korea as a nuclear state.”
The delegations discussed the current threat, committed to rigorous enforcement of sanctions and DPRK non-proliferation, and strategized how to best employ effective diplomacy and next steps to defuse tensions.
Following the final plenary, Freeland and Tillerson held a joint press conference where the latter summarized the assemblage’s outcome: “Our nations repeated a unified message that we have sent the regime before: we will not accept a nuclear armed North Korea. All of us share one policy and one goal, and that is the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
