Rep Chris Smith (NJ-04), Chairman of the China Commission, provided the following remarks:

     Mr. SMITH of New Jersey… Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the distinguished chairman for yielding and for his leadership on this issue and Ranking Member ENGEL, and especially thank Chairman SALMON for authoring this important piece of legislation.

     North Korea, as we know, poses an existential threat to its neighbors and requires constant vigilance and close cooperation of regional allies. The alliance between the United States, South Korea, and Japan is vital to curtail North Korea’s ever-worsening saber rattling and to ensure regional security and human rights.

     A strong relationship between the region’s leading democracies is also critically important to provide a balance to China’s increasingly uncertain diplomacy. China subsidizes North Korea’s bad behavior, enables the torture of asylum seekers by repatriating those who escape to China in direct contravention of the Refugee Convention, which they have signed and ratified, and provides Kim Jong-Un needed currency by employing thousands of trafficked workers.

     Though the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on North Korea recommended the U.N. impose targeted sanctions on the North Korean leaders responsible for massive crimes against humanity, China blocked effective U.N. actions. That is why the U.S., South Korea, and Japan must work together to identify and list those North Koreans responsible for egregious human rights abuses.

     Pyongyang’s enablers, abusers, and nuclear customers must be identified, and those responsible individuals for gross human rights violations ought to be held to account individually.
There is growing evidence that sanctions are having some effect. We know that high-level diplomats and military leaders are defecting, recognizing that they will be held accountable if they continue to support Kim Jong-Un’s barbaric regime.

     The trilateral relationship is also critically important to ensure regional security. North Korea’s nuclear quest and the multiple recent tests of missile technology demonstrate again that China cannot or will not control its protege. Despite China’s objections, there is need for deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system and to conduct joint military exercises to strengthen coordination and cooperation posed by the threat of the North Korean military.

     I support the resolution strongly and hope the House votes unanimously for it.