The United States has urged Russia and China to change course and stop rewarding North Korea's bad behavior and shielding it from sanctions by circumventing activities on its weapons programs, Reuters reports.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield made the statement during a visit to the Demilitarized Zone - the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war.
She is visiting South Korea after Russia vetoed a resolution to annually renew the multinational group of experts that has monitored the implementation of long-standing U.N. sanctions against North Korea for the past 15 years, imposed over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
Moscow's veto and China's abstention only "increase" North Korea's efforts to circumvent international sanctions and "shield" it from accountability, Thomas-Greenfield stressed.
"Hiding the truth doesn't change it. Encouraging bad behavior only encourages it," she warned. "We call on Russia and China to change course and once again call on Pyongyang to choose diplomacy and sit down at the negotiating table to engage in constructive dialogue."
Washington will work with South Korea, Japan and other Security Council partners to consider "some creative ways, some outside-the-box thinking" to continue monitoring the implementation of sanctions and the rest of the work being done by the expert group, Thomas-Greenfield added.
In Seoul, she met with a group of young North Korean defectors and praised their escape to the South as "courageous and inspiring."
"One of my priorities is to publicize the human rights abuses in the DPRK, to publicize and amplify your voices as refugees," she told them.
Thomas-Greenfield arrived on a visit on Sunday and yesterday met with President Yun Suk-yeol and Seoul's foreign and defense ministers, with whom she discussed ways to deter North Korea's weapons programs and promote human rights in the isolated country.
She will also visit Japan, where she will meet with family members of Japanese citizens abducted at the turn of the century by North Korea, and will also visit Nagasaki, which was hit by a US atomic bomb in 1945.
Both South Korea and Japan are US allies and members of the UN Security Council.